Cover History

1. Early Magazine Covers
2. The Poster Cover
3. Pictures Married to Type
4. In the Forest of Words

1. The Early Magazines dedicated their opening page to the cover page to the table of contents. If they ever had a cover it only contained the title and publication data, no worded descriptions. Some had a formal book-layout type covers. Symbols or drawn pictures were also used to give a description of what the magazines subject was. Others had cover lines that could indicate what was in the magazine, but those were the generic covers.

2. The Poster Covers were around the time that good graphic designers came out. The cover was usually just cover art and a cover line announcing the theme or even an unobtrusive group of cover lines that are vastly overshadowed by the art. The cover art was really elaborate too. After a while, the art pictures were replaced with big photographs. Some of these photographs were striking close ups of whoever was featured in the magazines.

3. The Pictures were "Married" To the type to show a relationship between the cover and the articles. The covers had a large title with a models face overlapping it, a model in a almost full body pose, a model in an unusual and expressive posture, and cover lines on all sides of her, carefully positioned in relation to the model and the background. There is a primary and a secondary set of cover lines. Most of the cover lines identify the names of the contributors, not the topics of their articles and even the name of the cover illustrator appears on a prominent place. Pretty soon, the magazine covers seemed to display all of their magazines contents.

4. In the Forest Words some covers of this period contain cover lines that are actually larger than the name of the magazine. A powerful picture is rarely enough for magazine covers of this period. Even among magazines that display photographs of exposed models cover lines often intrude upon the nudeness. the models on magazine covers look at us through the listed contents of the magazines or stand in.