Annals of "flapvertising": Sharp magazine sells ad window in its logo

According to a story in Masthead, Sharp magazine has made a deal with the ad agency of automaker BMW to die-cut two separate flaps in its front cover, including one that alters the name of the magazine to become part of an inside front cover ad. Noah Vardon, strategy manager at Media Experts who worked with Contempo Media [publishers of Sharp] on the execution, explained BMW, the creative agency

Magaward best cover winner said to be "divorced from reality" of the newsstand

Scott Bullock is well-known as a magazine newsstand expert and a guy with strong opinions about what works and what doesn't in driving single copy sales. I defer to his expertise (almost) completely on such matters.But I have to disagree with his recent post on his CoversSell blog (mirrored on Masthead) about this year's winner in the cover category at the National Magazine Awards. Bullock felt

Maclean's uses "tumble cover" to highlight both Harper win and bin Laden death

Front cover
When there is almost too much news to cover in one week's issue, Maclean's has turned to the device of printing two covers -- one with the victorious Stephen Harper, the other with the face of the assassinated leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. 

Back cover
The bin Laden cover is inverted on the outside back.They are featured on the 182-page issue (biggest ever for a regular issue

Not a triumph -- magazine shows lack of historical perspective

I'd prefer to believe the editors who wrote or approved the cover line on the current issue of Argyle magazine were somehow unaware of the implication of their main coverline -- Triumph of the Will. It lives forever in infamy as the title of filmaker Leni Riefensthal's propoganda movie commissioned by Adolf Hitler to trumpet the 1934 Nazi party congress at Nuremberg.We're in agreement with

Toronto Mayor, vexed by cover illustration, orders NOW magazine copies destroyed

[This post has been updated] Municipal staff in Toronto have been instructed to search out and destroy all copies of NOW magazine from City Hall and all municipal facilities because it features an unflattering cover image of Mayor Rob Ford. An internal memorandum published by the magazine says the purge was ordered by the mayor's office.
The image for the cover story by Enzo Di Matteo, is clearly

Covering Burtynshky was a piece of canny timing for Canadian Art

Whenever a genie comes out of a bottle, always ask for perfect timing. Canadian Art magazine certainly seems to have it, with its fall 2010 cover image and cover story inside by Sarah Milroy on uber-photographer Edward Burtynsky and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. This is particularly so as Burtynsky has been named the recipient of the biennial MOCCA award in contemporary art from the Museum of

Vampire front wins magazine cover of the year for Harper's Bazaar

 Harper's Bazaar December 2009 "Twilight" cover has been named the [U.S.] magazine cover of the year in the annual awards of the American Society of Magazine Editors. Previously announced had been the winners in various categories:Best news and Business -- The Atlantic "Fat Nation"
Best entertainment and celebrity --GQ "Clint Eastwood"
Best Fashion & Beauty -- The New Yorker
Best Lifestyle --

Nice work when you can get it: Seth talks about creating The Walrus summer reading cover

An interesting interview between Walrus art director Brian Morgan and cartoonist Seth about the process they went through to come up with the cover(s) for the magazine's summer reading issue...and other stuff, including Seth's creative influences and working methods. For magaziners, it's irresistible. 

The cover above (one of two that readers were asked to select from) was eventually

East Coast Living shows off the redesign it won in a national competition

Regular readers will recall that East Coast Living magazine won the competition to receive a free makeover from K9 Designs in Toronto. The results of that at least the cover makeover are in. Above is the cover before and after (its forthcoming winter issue). ECL also won some strategic direction and redesign on interior layouts from K9 Design (to be unveiled in November), circulation consultation

Going to the dogs a perennial favourite on magazine covers

Grids, Robert Newman's design website, has an amusing take on magazines' penchant for putting pictures of dogs on their covers. There is a collection of 20 dog covers available.(The one above was from Time issue of August 16).

British magazine New Scientist uses brain scans to select cover

The British magazine New Scientist chose its most recent cover by sitting 19 right-handed men down and recorded their reactions to a variety of covers while measuring their reactions with an electroencephalograph. According to a post by Peter Krafka in All Things Digital, the magazine's editors hired the firm NeuroFocus essentially to pick the brains of their target audience. The design [shown]

Imitation is the sincerest form of cover design, apparently

A good-time browse can be had at theblog Doppelgänger Design where illustrator Brian Taylor posts uncannily (and sometimes suspiciously) similar cover designs and where you can see how a good idea (as above, Cheap Eats) can proliferate.There are even examples of where magazines imitate themselves, as in this Rolling Stone clone of a "Friends" cover by a "Glee" cover.  

Sienna Miller cover of GQ (UK) wins reader's choice poll as best cover of 2009.

This was the best British magazine front cover from last year, as voted by the public in the annual Maggies magazine cover awards. (thanks to Magculture.com). The Maggies are the result of a national poll of readers.The Maggies website  quotes Charlotte Zamani, the managing editor, on why it was the winner:At a time when ‘flat was the new up’, GQ grew by 8% at UK newsstand and now outsells the

Best Health magazine demonstrates how to feel good naked

Best Health magazine, the Reader's Digest spinoff, is unveiling a whole new attitude, literally and figuratively, with its forthcoming "love your body" issue in May. It features a tasteful, friendly cover model in the altogether, plus coverlines like "Feel good naked", something you'd rarely, if ever, have seen in an RD product in years past.

Something to aspire to: George Lois's '60s Esquire covers

Last week New York magazine published a story and a slideshow that featured iconic art director George Lois talking about his 12 favourite Esquire covers and how they came to be. It is well worth a view and something to aspire to in terms of creative juice, guts, luck and the patronage of an editor who knew good stuff when he saw it. This was in spite of the hell it was going to raise (in fact,

Women encouraged to dump fashion magazines that make them feel bad about themselves

A campaign by the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) is aimed at getting women to ditch their fashion magazines because they make their readers feel fat. The transit ad (there are also greeting cards, T-shirts, print ads, garment tags and a petition) is on a shelter at Queen Street West and Soho Street in Toronto. It has a slot where readers can dispose of their fashion magazines

Hmmmmm....

Texas Monthly (Dec. 2007)    Vancouver magazine (March 2008)

ASME best cover finalists named by Amazon visitors

Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Harper’s Bazaar were among the ten magazine covers chosen by Amazon.com customers as “Best Magazine Cover of the Year” in their respective categories, the American Society of Magazine Editors have announced.According to a story in Audience Development, this is the first time ASME has had consumers, rather than ASME members, choose the winners and it was done

Wallow in covers with searchable site

A friend has pointed us to a fun and fascinating resource -- a site called Cover Browser, that was created in 2006 and has more than 450,000 searchable covers of comic books, pulp magazines and magazine covers for mavens to explore.It's fun regardless of whether you see them as historical artifacts or reference for magazine design or just general interest. Even more amazing, the searchability is

Sure we airbrush, but so what? This isn't journalism, says Self editor

Editors shouldn't apologize for retouching cover subjects, says the editor-in-chief of Self magazine. In a posting on her blog, Lucy Danziger says that Self's portraits are not meant to be unedited or true-to-life snapshots. “This is art, creativity and collaboration. It's not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best. That is the point,