One Reason Magazines Are Suffering: Their Covers

What ever happened to the innovative, arty magazine cover?

I love magazines, but the current state of magazine covers mystifies me. October saw the industry shrink; layoffs and closures abounded. This week was especially bloody, with new cuts at Conde Nast’s Portfolio and Men’s Vogue, and Time Inc. cuts that could affect People, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune.

The industry’s response to slowing sales has been to be to play it safe. Most cover images seem either bland or retro, as if all notions of innovation had disappeared. But have publishers considered that covers tested in focus groups and carefully calibrated not to offend might be part of the reason for flagging circulation? Wouldn’t it make sense to at least try to be striking and modern?

Trying to make funny pictures of comedians is a truly hopeless endeavor. You can’t style humor – it can only be caught on the fly.

At the normally up-to-date GQ, the retro reference is to two former presidents as Mark Seliger shoots Jimmy Kimmel as both Kennedy and Nixon. Unfortunately, it’s one of those ideas that probably sounded better in the meeting than it looks on the page. Trying to make funny pictures of comedians is a truly hopeless endeavor. You can’t style humor—it can only be caught on the fly.

Elsewhere, whether for modernity’s sake or simply because McCain is a less-than-stellar seller, it’s clearly Obama’s month. New York magazine goes with a heroic shot of Obama by Nigel Parry, Vibe weighs in with a tightly cropped half-face and a stylish picture on the contents page, while Rolling Stone, debuting its new smaller size, goes with a mildly fish-eye close-up in their third Obama cover of the year. Interestingly, neither candidate seems to vet the photographers. Vibe has Terry Richardson, a terrific photographer but one more normally associated with hedonistic shots of naked babes.

And recently there was a minor controversy when The Atlantic sent photographer Jill Greenberg, best known for her detailed portraits of crying babies, to shoot a McCain cover. During the shoot, Greenberg took the opportunity to fire off several highly unflattering portraits of McCain, which she lost no time dispersing around the Internet and using to create anti-McCain posters.

Back in retro land, Esquire reprises its famous 2000 Bill Clinton “crotch shot” with Halle Berry. Just a few months ago, the magazine referenced another famous picture by posing four Victoria’s Secret models in just sweaters and heels. But was it the 1966 Angie Dickinson picture they were referencing, or the 2003 Britney Spears re-creation of the Dickinson picture? Perhaps Esquire ought to follow British magazine i-D’s lead, where every month the cover subject winks to form the letters i-D. (Rotate the letters 90 degrees clockwise and you’ll get it.) Esquire could distinguish their brand by simply going all-bottomless, all the time!