Hands on progress

On the heels of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, coverage has focused on our lack of progress on giving equal rights to gays and lesbians. It may be good, though, to see how far we have come. The covers here give some perspective.

The first two, ten years apart, demonstrate that magazine editors, when faced with the prospect of illustrating gay issues, went no farther than the hands. Be safe. Stick with symbolism, not actual people. Heaven forbid we should look at faces. Time’s cover is from 1979. Newsweek’s is from 1990. Not much progress in the intervening 11 years.

Also, not much originality. At least Newsweek did not ask “How Gay is Gay.”

Fast forward to People magazine August 2008. Look at Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi’s wedding. Faces and everything. Just like real people celebrating their wedding.

Life.com Archive to Launch Soon

Margaret Bourke-White. Alfred Eisenstadt. Gordon Parks. W. Eugene Smith. Those of you familiar with Life magazine know that these are some of that famed magazine's famed photographers. Now you can see their photos and more than ten million images from the Life photo archive. The new Life site--Life.com--Your World in Pictures--will launch in early 2009.  It is co-sponsored by Getty Images. 

Here's how they're planning to make money from this venture: Images will be directly linked to the sales site QOOP.  Getty Images will handle licensing for commercial purposes.  So it will be a fun site to browse.  And, Time Inc. hopes some of those browsers become buyers.


 

Time Magazine's FDR/Obama Cover: An Eerie Gimmick

This cover bothers me. It’s the November 24, 2008 Time magazine, with the cover line, “The New New Deal: What Barrack Obama can learn from F.D.R.—and what the Democrats need to do.” The cover story, “The New Liberal Order,” is by Peter Beinart.  

Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel says the story suggests that Obama might restore order in the way FDR did, by forging a liberal majority. “Liberalism is about regulating,” he says.

All that sounds great. I am all for order. I respect FDR.  And I respect Obama.  So why does this cover bother me so much?

For those of you not glued to cable news and Internet, the cover uses an original image of FDR, with Obama’s face Photoshopped into FDRs.

I find it eerie and a little disrespectful.  I am comfortable with the connection—most historians credit FDR with helping to pull us out of the Great Depression.  Americans looked to him with hope and supported him by electing him to four terms of office, making him the only president to be elected for more than two terms. In 1951, the 22nd Amendment imposed a two-term limit on the presidency to keep that from happening again.

So the magazine's overt message is solid.  It is the image itself I find troubling. It takes our new president-elect, a very serious man, and makes him look a little like a 1930s playboy. In FDRs time, that cigarette holder—or whatever it is—and hat may have looked dapper and sophisticated. Today, they look silly, and they make the president-elect, who has great promise, look a little less than himself.

Photoshopping is a great tool for cleaning up photos. Should it be used to replace one president's face with another on a major magazine?  What an odd question to even have to ask. The clear answer to me is:  "No."  That's a gimmick.  It's neither good design nor good journalism.  And it certainly is not good photography, if it is photography at all. 

Magazine Cover Design: Newsstand vs. Subscription

Look at how Ladies’ Home Journal changes its cover to appeal to two different audiences: newsstand buyers and subscribers. The cover photo is identical.

The newsstand cover (below) has:
• far more cover lines—on both sides, so it doesn’t matter if other magazines on the newsstand cover the left, right, or even the bottom.
• varied typography, both in color and size. The giant “Paula Deen’s Halloween” is designed to grab you from two to three shopping carts away.
• a number—essential, in magazine lore, to grab the reader quickly and to imply value.
• the barcode, which drives art directors nuts. Not the prettiest cover element.

The subscription (above) cover has:
• more subdued typography—the same size, with no giant cover lines.
• an airier look—the buyer has already signed up, so no need to charm her with numbers or multiple sell lines.

Drake Wins Another Pacemaker

Drake walked away with another Pacemaker this year—for Drake Magazine. The judges were complimentary about Drake Mag, of course,  but also made some great comments about Think. You can read details here. Some excerpts:

Drake Magazine, Drake University School of Journalism. Of the many good magazines I saw, this one had a sophistication and comprehension of magazine structure and design that were not equaled elsewhere. The cover, a simple but elegant graphic based on words and a geometric background, was inviting and clear. The index, on a two page spread, echoed the cover graphic, and elegantly presented the total contents — front of the book, well, and back of the book — in clear and size-appropriate order, with the four well stories visually predominant but the other elements quickly grasped, and easily found in the magazine itself. At least one of the well stories was a new and surprising subject to me: diabulemia, in which diabetics forgo insulin injections in order to lose weight. A fashion/cultural comment feature called Girls Gone Mild (a bit of a cliché in a headline these days) was fun and interesting. A piece on on-line universities was informative. And the fourth well piece, on video games, took a sharp look at their impact on study habits. I was especially impressed by the attention given to the front and back of the book sections, and by the elegant transitions between these sections. Bits & Pieces offered cultural observations, a brief book review, news snippets (a story about how hedgehog safety resulted in a safer McFlurry container) and other short items. The back of the book, like the front, featured a number of clever short items under catchy rubrics: Spare Change (stories about personal finance), Folks, Say What (an article about students experimenting with a robot baby, as a family planning exercise). Photographs throughout were fine, though this was not the magazine’s strongest element. But altogether a really impressive effort, beautifully designed, with a coherent clear editorial mission.

Think. Drake University. There were three good entries from Drake, but I was impressed by the unabashed advocacy in this one. The issue includes a surprisingly opinionated editorial letter on the need for America to get back in touch with the world. This viewpoint is carried out in the articles, book reviews, short takes on consumer buying and global responsibility. It’s not to everyone’s political taste, but I admired the forthrightness of it.

Obama on Time and Newsweek

Here's the first of the historic covers.