MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. By media blogger MediaSlut.
INTERNATIONAL
CANDY, Summer 2013
Looks like just another fun cover, fun magazine with a fun girl, right? Well, CANDY is “the first transversal style magazine.” This is their 6th issue, they only printed 1 500 copies of this issue, and it’s non other than Jared Leto on the cover! Love it! And if you browse through this issue, I’m sure you’ll also agree that the magazine is actually very serious about what they are doing, and they are doing an amazing job at supplying a title like CANDY to such a niche market. Art.
Esquire (Malaysia), July 2013
Esquire Malaysia is doing an amazing job with their covers, and in breaking the mould with what mass-consumer-covers tend to look like. I’m loving how they keep re-creating their covers, and the way the their cover lines are displayed! Also see their May 2013 cover as well as their June 2013 cover;
The New Yorker, 8 July 2013
I think this The New Yorker cover celebrating marriage equality in the States is absolutely amazing. I’ll let the cover, the image (by Jack Hunter), and the message talk for itself…
SEPP, Issue 7, 2013
SEPP seems to be a soccer magazine, but the reason why I chose it as one of my favourite covers, is because they are also doing something unique and new that I haven’t seen done before; all the main information about the magazine is … squished really in the masthead SEPP. It’s not the best design, or use of font, but it’s something new and I’m sure it will spark something else and even better in the near future.
LOCAL
Mango Juice, July 2013
This is definitely my favourite in-flight magazine cover for the month, and probably one of my favourites for the year. For the July 2013 cover of Mango Juice, I’m told by Ingrid Jones the editor that the cover is really hand-knitted by Laduma, especially for Mango Juice, after being profiled in the same issue. Laduma is a designer who works with traditional Xhosa patterns for his male jersey line. It made me think a bit about the VISI 64 cover where readers could physically hand-knit their own VISI cover… I’m loving the creativity in the South African magazine industry at the moment!
– The (for now anonymous) 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 South African magazines might fail, but most importantly, succeed. If you’re looking for a library about South African magazines and news, your one-stop pitstop is MediaSlut. #MagazinesForTheWin
– Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us @marklives and @mediaslut
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