Cover Stories – Shane de Lange

MagLove: The best magazine covers this week (17 March 2017)

MediaSlut (@MediaSlut)’s choice of the best international and South African magazine covers this week:

L’Equipe
The New York Times Magazine (Music Issue)
Plascon Spaces
rooi rose (75th Birthday Issue)
The Guardian Guide

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives and @MediaSlut.
Want to view all the covers at a glance? See our MagLove Pinterest board!

L’Equipe, 18 February 2017

PMS. Periods. Menstruation. Monthlies. The curse. That time of the month. So many different ways of referring to it, but it still comes down to one thing, and its big reality. L’Equipe, a French sports magazine, does an investigation into the “last taboo of sport”, and illustrates it subtly yet extremely effectively! Kudos*!

*Kudos (from the Ancient Greek: κῦδος) is acclaim or praise for exceptional achievement. So, not another way of referring to PMS…

The New York Times Magazine, 12 March 2017 (Music Issue)

What a stunner of a cover, issue, and article (especially digitally!). The amazing typography (or lettering, as it’s called), is done by artist Braulio Amado. Make sure you hop over to the special webpage to get the full effect of this great piece of work as it not only lists the 24 artists and songs but has great writeups, photography and — wait for it — the actual songs that are included for each of them! Oh, and you can download each song if you want to. AND there’s a special podcast where they “talk to some of the great writers in this issue about the songs that spoke to them”…

Here’s the list of songs and artists you will find:

Send My Love (to Your New Lover) — ADELE
You Want It Darker — LEONARD COHEN
I’m Better — MISSY ELLIOTT
Mask Off — FUTURE
Jolene — PENTATONIX
We the People … — A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
One Night — LIL YACHTY
Rewind — KELELA
This Girl — KUNGS VS. COOKIN’ ON 3 BURNERS
Make Them Die Slowly (John George Haigh) — CHURCH OF MISERY
Barok Main — MICA LEVI & OLIVER COATES
Mourn at Night — KA
Hold My Mule — SHIRLEY CAESAR
A Woman’s Face — Reprise (Sonnet 20) — RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Copper Canteen — JAMES McMURTRY
U.B.U. — SOLANGE
Side to Side — ARIANA GRANDE
Fade — KANYE WEST
Trolley Song — CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT
Grigio Girls — LADY GAGA
OOOUUU — YOUNG M.A
Changes — CHARLES BRADLEY
Seigfried — FRANK OCEAN
Your best American Girl — MITSKI
Bad and Boujee — MIGOS

Bonus track

Spit Out the Bone — METALLICA

Plascon Spaces, Autumn 2017

Plascon Spaces not only always creates and inspires with beautiful colour palettes but the story it tells with some of its covers, and the inspiration offered, is what I really love! This is a “young person’s workspace” (clearly a young girl) yet, instead of going with the normal pinks, it’s showing that her room may be just as beautiful (if not more) by breaking the mould — and I adore it! What I also love about this cover and the styling is that, wherever I look on the cover, I see objects and colour that inspire my own child’s room (one day). Here’s more information about the objects and colours on the cover. And, if you want more inspiration, read all the back issues free of charge on its website.

rooi rose, April 2017 (75^th Birthday Issue)

No, it’s not Karen Zoid who is 75 (she’s 38), it’s rooi rose which is really looking great for its age! It feels like just the other day that it celebrated its 70^th (with a truly memorable issue and foldout cover), yet here we are again! Congratulations with your birthday, ma’am! Go behind the scenes with Zoid here..

The Guardian Guide, 17 March 2017

Look familiar? That’s because this is a comedic replica of the memorable New York Times Magazine issue of 21 August 2016 (#4 in my Top 10 list last year), with Statue Simon Amstell, the English comedian, television presenter, director and actor, instead of Statue David. Love a bit of humour every so often J. Read more here.

MagLove by @MediaSlut is a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week, recognising well thought-out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three-in-one) covers and celebrating the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. The anonymous (for now) blogger behind MediaSlut knows way too much for his own good about media in South Africa, magazines in particular. His mission is to show when SA magazines fail but, most importantly, also when they succeed. If you’re looking for a library about SA magazines and news, this is your one-stop pitstop.