I’m a big fan of the August-September cover of Organic Gardening, art directed by Susan Eugster and featuring an illustration by Peter Donnelly. I’ve reviewed the cover as the latest Face Up column for Folio online. This is a very different approach for a gardening and lifestyle magazine, with the illustration taking over the entire […]
In it’s debut issue, Suede editor Suzanne Boyd identified the magazine’s audience as “multi-culti urbanistas.” The style and fashion magazine was a joint venture between Essence magazine and Time Inc., and published four issues in 2004-05 before it folded. The complete Suede debut issue manifesto read: “Style is in our DNA. And we, the multi-culti […]
Our Sports, “The Great New Negro Sports Magazine,” was published in 1953, and ran for five issues. It featured top African-American sports stars on the cover: Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Minnie Minoso, Satchel Paige, and George Taliaferro, who was the first black football player drafted into the NFL. Jackie Robinson was listed prominently on the […]
Charm magazine started in the 1940s, but it came into its own in 1950, when it relaunched as “The Magazine for Women Who Work,” and hired Cipe Pineles as art director. Pineles is a legendary designer who earlier art directed Seventeen and Glamour. Charm was the first magazine for working women, and the covers featured […]
Sexology magazine was published from 1933 to the late 1960s by Hugo Gernsback, who is best-known for creating the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. Gernsback published dozens of other magazines, including Science Wonder Stories, Amazing Detective Stories, and Science and Mechanics. The Magazine Art website has a fine collection of Sexology covers […]
I’ve been a big fan of Michelle Obama‘s many magazine covers, so I was happy to review her latest cover on Essence for the Folio: online Face Up column. The cover was photographed by Kwaku Alston, and art directed by Erika Perry. Michelle Obama has become a top magazine cover celebrity, arguably the top celebrity […]
Back in the early 1980s, I was living and working in pre-grunge Seattle. The only one place to find cool magazines from around the world was the Read All About It newsstand at the Pike Place Market. I would wander over there (I lived just a few blocks away) several times a week to pick […]
My new review for the Folio: online Face Up column looks at the July-August 2014 cover of Mother Jones, “Koch vs. Koch.” The cover was art directed by Ivylise Simones, and features a tabloid parody of right-wing bogeymen the Koch Brothers. The parody is spot on, with just the right mix of funkiness and visual […]
The Illustrated Aviary is a regular inside back page feature in the bimonthly Audubon magazine. Launched last year by creative director Kevin Fisher, each issue features a different, high-level illustrator reimagining John James Audubon‘s famous “Birds of North America” paintings. The page includes a brief interview with the illustrator discussing the creative process, as well […]
In 1986, Paul Elliman took over as art director of jazz and new music magazine Wire, and gave it a complete and powerful redesign, stripping it down to minimal color and typography, big, bold, stylish photography (most of it black and white), and large swaths of white space. It stood in stark contrast to the […]
