Magazine Covers

Early Magazine Covers:

The Town and Country Magazine

April 1788

Early magazines tend to have a table of contents as a cover rather than a picture as we are used to seeing in todays magazines. The covers tended to design their covers like the covers of books. Many used a symbol or generic illustration and began with an article on the front page.

The Poster Cover

The Ladies Home Journal

1897

Influenced by the Art Norveau movement, they looked as though they were meant to be framed and hung on a wall. These covers tend to have a large image as the main focus, a bold title and no description of what is inside the magazine, the look more like posters than books or magazines.  

Pictures Married to Type

McClures Magazine 

1898

Tend to have bold, symbolic, traditional imagery. Type and art cover have a mutually supportive relationship. Large title with models face overlapping it. Cover lines. Covers began to give a description of what is inside the magazine, a variety of pictures were being used involving people of all different backgrounds.

In the Forest of Words

Vanity Fair

More modern magazine covers. Uses bold type, images of well known people, words all over cover giving a short description of what is inside the magazine in an attempt to get people curious and buy the magazine. Talk about things in the world we live in, deal with popular topics and more controversial ideas and individual questions and vanities.