The Final Decline and Total Collapse of the American Magazine Cover While on the subject of collapses I thought you media mavens out there would enjoy this and other essays on this excellent website/blog.
About a month ago, I turned on the Public Radio International program Studio 360 and was pleased to hear the unmistakable Bronx accent of legendary adman George Lois, who was host Kurt Andersen’s guest that morning. The talk inevitably turned to Lois’s covers for Esquire in the sixties, the high point of his career and probably one of the high points in 20th century American graphic design, period. Why, wondered Andersen, didn’t anybody do covers like these any more? “They’re all infatuated with the idea that celebrity, pure celebrity, sells magazines,” growled Lois.
Exactly one week later, I served as a judge for the annual competition of the Society of Publication Designers. Walking down table after table groaning under the weight of glossy magazines festooned with photographs of celebrities (or “celebrities”) Jessica Simpson, Ashton Kutcher, Carrie Anne Moss and Justin Timberlake, it was hard to deny that Lois was right.
I wish the covers of everything were abstract, forcing us to open them to discover what they are.
Today everything seems to be shouting at us, distracting, persuading, trying to take our hard earned cash, trying to convert us to whatever we have no real proclivity for, and bashing us with surface appeals.
If every magazine cover and book cover and CD cover was abstract art, with no logo, no title, no name, until you did something to “expose” it, just think how much work I’d have in Art Test Explosion blog.
Please make it come true.
This is something I’ve been considering vis-a-vis our “well-informed” electorate. Madison Avenue types have been running elections, so long, now, that it’s beginning to feel like “celebrity” is the appropriate descriptive.
It’s filtering down from the national arena to state and local elections, especially in major metropolitan areas.
Just another one of those “forum” topics, John.
The New Yorker and The Economist still have great covers. Although, The Economist is technically not a U.S. publication.