Duck and cover: Weimar Berlin

Blickfang: the eye-catching covers of Weimar Berlin (A Journey Round My Skull)

Duck (goose?) and cover

30 book covers from Poland (from A Journey Round My Skull)

Duck and cover: The most controversial mag. covers of all time

"While some controversial covers have worked and sold more magazines, or won awards for the editors who made the decision to go to press with them, others were embarrassments that the publication had to either apologize for, or fire an editor over." (WebDesignerDepot)

Duck and cover: E-ink

Esquire’s E Ink Cover A 21st Century Flop: "Esquire unveiled a special 75th edition today sporting the first use by a magazine of electronic paper technology, but what is presented as the future of digital/print convergence is little more than ink mashed with some underutilized circuitry." (wired.com)

Duck and cover: MacWorld

A short time-lapse video showing the photography, Photoshop, and layout stages for a cover of MacWorld magazine. Call me crazy, but this seems like a lot of time and money spent to produce a cover that ends up looking essentially like nothing more than stock photography. (File under "reinventing the wheel.")

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

"After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs."

Duck and cover: The Pelican Project

The Pelican project: a collection of Pelican paperback covers from the 1930s to the 1980s

A question of balance: redesigning the Atlantic

Look behind the scenes at last fall's redesign of an icon of American journalism.

1. A general discussion: "For a graphic designer, few jobs are as challenging as designing a magazine. Unlike a logo or a poster, the design of which can rely on blunt simplicity, a magazine is a complex organism, the result of an intricate interplay of words and pictures. Any single issue represents thousands of minute decisions about typography, layout, photography, and illustration. And these decisions are made within an accepted system of conventions -- preconceptions we all share about how a magazine is read -- and more practical and mundane limitations like budgets and schedules...." A Question of Balance, the atlantic.com

2. A slightly more detailed take from the design studio: "When Pentagram undertook a redesign of the Atlantic -- the eighth in its history -- the goal was to establish an intelligent and striking framework for the magazine’s wide-ranging editorial voice."

3. Bonus gallery: 151 Years of Atlantic covers

Duck and cover: ASME's Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years

On October 17, 2005, the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years were unveiled at the 2005 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in Puerto Rico, by Mark Whitaker, Editor of Newsweek and President of American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), and AMC Chairman Evan Smith, Editor of Texas Monthly.

Duck and Cover: The Economist

Frank's presentation on good covers inspired me to come up with a new department here at URMAblog, which I'm calling duck and cover. For the first installment, I humbly submit this one, from The Economist.

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