Homage, Inspiration, or .......

Here's my own contribution to the SPD "Inspiration" discussion. In 1993 I was working as design director at The Village Voice. A few hours before closing, the editors came up with a new cover idea, the diminished mayorality of NYC Mayor David Dinkins. Desperate for an idea, I came across a recent Time magazine cover on President Clinton, "The Incredible Shrinking President." Voice editor Jonathan Larsen loved the idea of expropriating an idea from Time (the cover had gotten a lot of publicity when it came out), so we tweaked it to our own story. Illustrator Eric Palma quickly drew a caricature of Dinkins for us and faxed it over. We scanned the fax, added a credit line on the TOC that acknowledged the cover was "inspired by....," and closed the it all about an hour later.