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Charles Apple: The Visual Side of Journalism

 

‘Magazine design’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

May 7: Let’s help a friend of publication designers everywhere

Do you know Robert Newman? You should. He’s downright legendary as a publication designer. A 1974 graduate of the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, Robert spent more than 26 years in visual leadership positions of a number of publications: Guitar World, the Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, New York, Details, Vibe, Inside, Real Simple and Fortune. A few samples of [...]

April 26: Just in case you’ve not yet seen this yet…

Here’s a wonderful cover from Boston magazine featuring actual shoes worn by Boston Marathon runners this year. Editor John Wolfson explains: Great idea! But how in the world were we going to execute it in time? We figured we’d need about 100 or so shoes, and we had very little time to get them. We were also going to have [...]

March 22: Just when you think you’ve seen it all regarding brackets… (1)

Just when you think you’ve seen every possible way to fill out a college bracket, along comes the New Yorker with a brand-new approach. It’s all about the amount of money spent on men’s basketball, says the New Yorker. So why not fill out a bracket in which the winning team in each game might be the school that spends [...]

Feb. 8: New York Times’ Style Magazine to launch redesign (1)

The New York Times Style Magazine — better known as T — launches a redesign two weeks from Sunday with its first issue under newly-installed editor Deborah Needleman. Images have leaked out already. Most of the buzz so far today has been about the cover logo.   Yeah, I agree: I like the old one better, too. That chiseled look [...]

Feb. 5: What? Me worry about an idea that’s been done before? (1)

Did you see last week’s issue of the New Yorker? The cover by German illustrator Birgit Schössow is quite clever. There’s just one little problem with it: It’s been done before. Twenty-three years ago, in fact, and by Mad magazine’s prolific margin-doodler Sergio Aragonés. More than likely, neither Birgit nor her editors at the New Yorker remember that old Mad [...]

Jan. 11: The more things change…

Submitted for your approval: This New Yorker magazine cover, illustrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Art Spiegelman. Provocative. Definitely current, right? Wrong: It was meant to be ironic. Look closer at the date: September 1993. That’s 19 years before Newtown and Aurora. And five-and-a-half years before even Columbine (April 20, 1999). Spiegelman posted this to his Facebook timeline recently. His comment: [...]

Dec. 28, 2012: A technical error? Or some new type of ‘data visualization’? (3)

It’s kind of hard to tell these days. I find a lot of what’s called “data visualization” to not be very helpful in understanding a story. But, hey: It’s popular and there are some editors out there who’ll pay for it. So whatever. Still, I found this graphic — straddling pages 50 and 51 of the new issue of Sports [...]

Dec. 23, 2012: Newsweek’s final cover straddles the old and the new

This morning, Newsweek tweeted the cover of its final print issue. On the cover: A vintage shot of the old Newsweek building. And a hashtag. Clever. If only the rest of the magazine had been this sharp. Find Newsweek‘s web site here.

Dec. 11, 2012: A sneak preview…

Here’s an advance look at this year’s Time magazine Person of the Year. Hmm. Makes perfect sense to me. Find Mad magazine’s daily humor blog here.

Nov. 15, 2012: I’ve been waiting for someone to create this particular Gen. Petraeus diagram

Let’s be honest. None of those diagrams you’ve seen over the past two days — viral over the internet and then on page one of a handful of papers Wednesday — adequately explained the sex scandal surrounding former CIA director David Petraeus. It’s not the fault of the hardworking designers and editors at these papers. The story is simply too [...]

Nov. 14, 2012: Not a great magazine advertising juxtaposition (2)

Nope. Not great at all. Evidently, this appeared in the October issue of Cosmopolitan. It was tweeted earlier today by benjimmin of Manchester, U.K. and then retweeted about a zillion times. Benjimmin tweets: For the record, I found the magazine picture elsewhere on t’internet. Don’t want people to think a) I deserve credit or b) I read Cosmo. Find more fun [...]

Nov. 11, 2012: Election Gangnam Style

Y’know, I thought this Gangnam Style thing had run its course already. Apparently not. In China, at least. Michigan alumnus and visual journalist Bridget O’Donnell — who’s a designer for Ataway in Shanghai — spotted this on a Chinese newsstand: Find Brodget’s blog and online portfolio here, her Tumblr here and her Twitter feed here.

Nov. 8, 2012: Over-the-top cover reactions to this week’s election results

Some news outlets seem to have had some fun — in a few cases, perhaps a little too much fun — with President Barack Obama‘s successful campaign to fend off challenger Mitt Romney. First off, consider the lead illustration for the day-after-Election Day edition of the BG News, the student paper at Bowling Green University in Ohio. Rock ‘em, Sock [...]

Nov. 3, 2012: Another extraordinary Sandy aftermath magazine cover

There is a bit of buzz out there today on the new cover for New York magazine. This stunning picture is by Iwan Baan. Click that for a larger view that shows lower Manhattan blacked out after Hurricane Sandy. New York posted the cover shot in its editors’ blog. I like this one even better than the clever illustrated New [...]

Nov. 3, 2012: The New Yorker’s timely, clever cover illustration

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, as illustrated by Adrian Tomine for the cover of the New Yorker. Brilliant stuff. The Brooklyn-based artist tells the New Yorker blog that he didn’t really feel the effects of the storm at his place. I spent the whole night glued to the Internet and watching everything unfolding, just being shocked that this kind of [...]

Nov. 2, 2012: Reversible magazine covers? Been there; done that.

Time magazine is getting a bit of buzz for the reversible covers it put on the cover this week.   Very cute. But let the record show, this sort of thing has been done before. A half-century ago. And by that paragon of serious journalism, Mad magazine. In November 1960, Mad published an image congratulating the new president. But before [...]

Oct. 5, 2012: The final word on the first presidential debate

The final word on Debate No. 1 of the 2012 presidential election season is in, courtesy of Bad Reporter cartoonist Don Asmussen of the San Francisco Chronicle. Funny stuff, once again. Find the Bad Reporter online archive here. Wait a minute… Correction: The real last word on the first presidential debate is this early Christmas Card, posted this week by [...]

Oct. 2, 2012: Charlotte Observer designer Sam Twarek returning to Cleveland magazine

Charlotte Observer designer Sam Twarek announced on Facebook this morning: Moving north to Cleveland in the middle of October to start my new job as associate art director of Cleveland Magazine. So pumped! This is a return to that publication for Sam. A 2010 graduate of Kent State University, he spent the summer of 2009 as a photo intern at [...]

Oct. 2, 2012: Mad magazine takes on Apple’s iOS 6 maps

A bit of genius from Mad magazine, of all folks: That’s a parody of Saul Steinberg‘s classic March 1976 New Yorker cover (below, left).   Unfortunately, the artist will remain unknown. The art is signed as “Slimeball.” Find the Mad magazine blog here. And while you’re there, check out the hilarious Justin Bieber “Got Milk?” parody ad. It’s a scream…

Aug. 20, 2012: Today’s rant: Are fact-checkers — or copy desks — no longer necessary? Not likely. (8)

We, like other news organizations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material. That was Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk to Politico, a) explaining that Newsweek no longer has fact-checkers, and b) attempting to dismiss the flaws in this week’s cover story by former McCain campaign strategist Niall Ferguson on the case against re-electing President Barack Obama. On that [...]

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