Appreciation: April 2010 Archives

Black and white covers of The New Yorker

Black and white covers of The New Yorker

This week's cover of The New Yorker by illustrator Bruce Eric Kaplan reminded me of how much I love straight-up black and white magazine covers. And it got us wondering how many other covers of The New Yorker were run totally in black and white (and grey....no color). Kaplan himself has done four others in all black and white, and there are a bunch of others as well, running all the way back to 1925.

This story was co-produced by Linda Rubes.


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Rare Specimen No.9: Don't Run In Socks

Rare Specimen No.9: Don't Run In Socks

I just loves me some good old school illustration gorgeousness. And there's no other illustrator who makes my toes curl quite like Milton Glaser. Therefore, I found myself sifting through my classical record albums over the weekend (silence those guffaws, please) and I came across this lil' honey of an illustration job that Glaser did, back in the 70's (fact checking that). You all know he'd done a whole bunch of lovely album covers, and I knew I had one, I just had to hunt it down. After that, I skittered across the hardwood floor in my socks to a book shelf where I'd stashed an old book Glaser did the cover art for, that I'd bought for a buck at a neighbor's tag sale a year ago. Grabbed it, and then limped over to another bookshelf (acquired sudden back spasm during that prior sock-on-wood move) and … MORE
The Fortune 500 cover legacy

The Fortune 500 cover legacy

The 2010 edition of the Fortune 500 issue will hit newsstands later this week. We don't care whether Wal-mart is #1 again; what we want to know is what creative director John Korpics will do with his first cover of the Fortune 500, the magazine's most celebrated franchise.

First published in 1956, over the years the Fortune 500 has inspired some brilliant covers by legendary Fortune art directors such as Leo Lionni and Walter Allner. Here are 10 of our favorites.

(Above): July 1961. Art director: Leo Lionni; designer: Walter Allner. This cover is an actual chart of the Fortune 500 companies by revenues. Each division in the large circle is five companies. The small circle on top is the key. Dark red indicates companies that had over $5 billion in sales, yellow equals over $2 billion, etc. (Granular chart info courtesy of Linda Eckstein, former graphics editor of Fortune).

This post was written and produced by Linda Rubes, former associate art director of Fortune.


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Classic TV Guide covers

Classic TV Guide covers

For the past three months I've been working with an expert team on a redesign project for TV Guide. The issue featuring the new look of the mag will drop the week of April 12. One of the best parts of the project was digging back into the magazine's rich visual history. Since it launched in 1953, TV Guide has had a long series of spectacular covers. In the 60s and 70s the magazine used a regular stable of illustrators, including Richard Amsel, Al Hirschfeld, Bob Peak, Ronald Searle, and Jack Davis, to create highly engaging and artful covers. They also used occasional guest artists like Andy Warhol, Romare Bearden, and Salvador Dali.

Sadly, there's no central archive of the entire run of TV Guide covers. But there is this wonderful Flickr page, run by fan and collector Jim Ellwanger, that collects over 350 of the greatest covers from the 1950s-2004. And there's also TV Guide: The Official Collectors Guide, a book that collects every cover from 1953 to 2005, when the magazine abandoned its digest size to become a full-size magazine.

(Above): November 29, 1975, Tony Curtis of McCoy, illustration by Bernard Fuchs.


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The Greatest Hits of Saul Bass

The Greatest Hits of Saul Bass

If you ever wanted a quick, one-stop spot to see the greatest hits of Saul Bass, now you can, courtesy of Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of the Verve. Ashcroft has a cool website that collects all of his favorite obsessions, including a tribute to designer-supreme Bass. You'll find a dozen posters, his greatest corporate logos, and six of his most masterful movie titles, including Vertigo, North By Northwest, and of course, The Man With the Golden Arm. When you're done with the Bass goodies, you'll probably enjoy the rest of Ashcroft's Brain Page, which includes visual tributes to Steve McQueen, the art of Blue Note Records, and much more. And of course, there's lots of music, too.


Celebrating 'On Language'Part 2

Celebrating 'On Language'
Part 2

In 2005 The New York Times Magazine began showcasing a different artist's interpretation of each week's 'On Language' column. Five years and well over two hundred contributors later, the space has become a weekly showcase for contemporary typography. On Thursday, April 22nd, the The New York Times Magazine opens the exhibition of these works, "Wordplay: The lettering of 'On Language.'" Last week we featured a few of the selected pieces from 2005-2007 that are part of the show; after the jump, some of the highlights from 2008 on...
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A Fine Thanks

A Fine Thanks

Last week I attended what I thought was going to be a retrospective exhibit of 10 years of editorial and design excellence at Metropolis magazine. As a relatively new New Yorker, and a long-time fan of the magazine's creative director, Criswell Lappin, I was excited to be invited to such a distinguished affair.… MORE

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