People magazine cover design 1974 and 2014

People magazine did one of those things I just can't resist. A throwback version of an old cover. 

It's People's fortieth anniversary and they did two fun things -- a throwback cover and a flip-and-read-it-from-the-back second cover. I'm not going to discuss the flip cover. I didn't like it at all.

Anyway here are the three front covers. The original cover -- from March 4, 1974 -- uses a supplied (I'm guessing) publicity photo of Mia Farrow in "The Great Gatsby." Okay, it probably was taken on the set of the movie for the magazine by a very professional magazine photographer, but it looks like a publicity shot. A movie still, not a cover photo. And the other two covers use highly-styled original photos of current pop sensation Taylor Swift by Martin Schoeller.

I've scanned the 1974 and 2014 subscription covers from small images in the 2014 newsstand issue.

The 1974 original cover is a pretty formal design. The logo characters are all kerned together in 1970's style -- making space for the word "Weekly" in the collision area. The logo is pushed to the very edge of the top and right hand side. The logo is also in black. I don't think they ran with a black logo for very long. It almost doesn't look like People magazine with a black logo. People has a white logo now and forever more.

The headlines are all very small and undifferentiated. All in Helvetica, all black.

It's a bit of a slog to try to read all the type on that cover.

The 2014 subscription cover kinda halfway tries to reproduce the look of the 1974 original. The designer could have gone all-out Helvetica, but stayed with People's current (wonderful) typeface, Metro. The small version of the original cover is a nice touch of variety and a needed explanation as to why Swift is munching on pearls like that. The big gap at the bottom left is for the mailing label. I'm guessing the printed versions have a very large white rectangle there. 

The 2014 newsstand cover takes what it wants from then and now. On the left is the cover homage -- with a little bit of color in the type treatment to add excitement and bring out Swift's eyes (and Swift is looking at the camera -- it's a much better shot). Note the position of the original cover thumbnail. That small cover is positioned to cover up the unattractive, non-floofy area of Swift's hair that's visible in the 2014 subscription cover.

White logo.

And on the right hand side, the cover design is completely today's People. Many colorful photos, colorful type. Something for everyone. Ugly, but that's the way it's done.

I think the People designers did a pretty good job playing off the so-so original cover. Too bad Telly Savalas wasn't the first People cover.

One Edmonton newspaper on 27 October 2014

The tabloid Edmonton Sun -- one of two daily papers in town -- seems to be doing quite well indeed. On a Monday, often a slow newspaper day, it was 76 news and entertainment pages and 28 sports pages. Tabloid pages are smaller than regular newspaper pages, yes. But still -- 104 pages. 

Edmonton Sun on Monday, Oct. 27, 2014. Click for larger view.

Sports pages are in a pull-out section in the middle. They are numbered separately from the rest of the paper.

Sports editorial content.

Of 104 pages, 36 pages were vehicle ads.

Car and truck ads.

Not a whole lot of other regular advertising (shown in blue) or classified advertising (in green). Some of these ads are house ads promoting the newspaper itself.

Cars and trucks in red, other ads in blue, classifieds in green.

I have no idea how the finances of the Sun are, but this looks like a pretty healthy Monday paper.

Vehicles = red, other ads = blue, classified ads = green, Sports section = yellow. Click for larger view.

Cavellini 1914-2014

The once-ubiquitous"Cavellini 1914-2014" sticker. 

I must apologize to Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (b. 1914 d.1990).

He authorized me to mount a centennial celebration exhibit at an American museum this year -- but I didn't do it.

I am authorized to organize a Cavellini centennial celebration at an American museum.

Long story.

In late 1984 I was working at TWA Ambassador -- a glossy in-flight magazine -- as an associate art director in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Best job I ever had, by the way.) I was encouraged by my boss, art director Barbara Koster, to come up with visual one-page story ideas. I'd previously had a page published in Ambassador about rubber stamps.

In 1984, Minneapolis and St. Paul seemed to have a lot of round, green-white-red "Cavellini 1914-2014" stickers everywhere. I must have been fascinated by the stickers and I must have done some research and got an address. I wrote to Cavellini about the possibility of doing an article about the sticker.

I was delighted to get back -- via mail, of course -- a bunch of stuff. Including many of the round stickers and a huge variety of other stuff. Books. Photos. Post cards. And an authorization.

Proposed page layout for TWA Ambassador magazine. January 1985. The type is from another story -- put in there to give an idea of the amount of writing I'd hoped would be done for the article.

I did a page layout -- it expanded to two pages -- and sent it and all the stuff over to an editor to have some words written to accompany the visuals. This was in January of 1985. The article was never published, however, because of Carl Icahn. Carl bought TWA and in his effort to squeeze as much money out of it as possible, he took the publishing contract away from the company I worked for and gave it to someone else.

I was out of a job.

But more importantly, the Cavellini article didn't run!

Here we are, thirty years later, I'm looking through the boxes of stuff I can't seem to throw out and I come upon this Cavellini treasure trove.

And the reminder that I am not going to be mounting a centennial celebration for the guy.

But hey -- I can mount a celebration on the internet, right?

Hey, Mister Cavellini! R.I.P.! Happy 100th!

In conclusion, here are a couple more interesting bits sent to me by Cavellini.

Cavellini's ten commandments. A postcard. I believe he broke every commandment. (As always, click for a closer view.)

Self portrait with stickers. He had a lot of stickers . . . 

. . . an awful lot of stickers.

A sticker. Cavellini loves the postal service.

Self portraits with a clown theme.

A sticker illustrating Cavellini's place in the bull of art history.

"Operation Round-Trip No. 2897" -- the front. Cavellini doing the mail-art thing. He dressed up and sent back an envelope that I originally sent to him (probably sending him some sample magazines). 

"Operation Round-Trip No. 2897" -- the back. "A work of Art by Cavellini to be framed and hung on the wall. 30 1/2 x 45 1/2." (I haven't framed it yet. Another regret.)

Two "M"s. 3-D.

Picked up a Mike McFadden button at this year's Minnesota State Fair. McFadden is trying to unseat U.S. Senator Al Franken. I think it's a nice enough design. Following on the Barack Obama lead of using a logo for political candidates. The McFadden logo even makes use of the three stripes from the Obama logo.

But the McFadden button and logo caught my eye because of it's use of old-fashioned 3-D colors. Almost as if the two "M"s are one "M" that stands out from the surface of the button -- if you are wearing 3-D glasses.

Looking at the button closer, I noticed that the overlapping brown color is not actually made of overlapping colors. It's a third printed color that simulates the overlap.

Post-Science Museum

I took this picture of the Church of Scientology in St. Paul, Minnesota in September of 2012. Until 1999, this building housed the Science Museum of Minnesota. Before the Church moved in, I believe a business school was there.

Church of Scientology, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2012.

I'd meant to post this picture at the time I took it -- with a matching picture of the old Science Museum, but after scouring my photos I could not find one image of a similar view. Today, as I'm going through my junk in preparation for a move to Edmonton, I found something to use! This postcard from the '80s or '90s. Note the logo on the back of the postcard. The name of that little honeycomb thing is "The Exuberant Man." 

Postcard of the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, circa 1990.

Back of postcard of the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, circa 1990.

The ends

Andy Sturdevant's very entertaining book, "Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow," devotes a chapter to the death of publications. He reprints the final notices -- and some suggestive articles that, read the right way, predict the end of the publications.

He quotes two publications I am familiar with -- and I actually remember reading these final notices myself.

Metropolis issue from July 12, 1977.
Photo by Paul Shambroom.

Inside spread from Metropolis, February 1977. Illos by (left
to right): Glenn Wolff, Michael Karn and Mark Simonson.

Here's the one from Metropolis. Metropolis was a very well designed weekly newspaper in Minneapolis/St. Paul. It did everything better than its weekly rival, the Entertainer (soon to be renamed Twin Cities Reader), yet it did not prevail.

Machete #8 from 1979. All of the issues
looked like this one -- except the final
issue (#16). Fall photos are by
Paul Shambroom.

The final issue of Machete (#16) from
1980. Photo by Paul Shambroom.

Here's the one from Machete. Machete was a monthly four-page, oversized paper put out by a couple of the same people who worked on Metropolis. It seemed more like a hobby than a real going concern, so I wasn't surprised when they called it quits.

But Andy left out a couple other suggestive articles. These two are from publications that I happened to work at when they went out of business.

Here's the one from a monthly music publication, Musician's Insider. That the Insider bought the Mad City Music Sheet doesn't automatically lead to the Insider going out of business. But, out of business it went. July 1979.

Here's the one from the weekly newspaper, Twin Cities Reader. This little news bit doesn't say that Stern Publishing bought both the Reader and its fierce rival, City Pages, at the same time. Stern immediately stopped publishing the Reader. City Pages is still published, though it may be owned by someone else now. March 12, 1997.

Update: I've added images of Metropolis and Machete courtesy Mark Simonson.

The colors of money

A bank named Canada Trust has named its automated teller machines, "Green Machine." The Green Machine logo is half-clever. It's a dollar sign (same in the U.S. and Canada) that is mutated into a letter "g." This is then used in the confusing manner of an initial cap. So you can read it Green Gmachine or Reen Machine or -- with some effort -- Green Machine.

$reen $machine

That's all fine. But beyond the design is the name itself. The "Green" in the name probably refers to money. In the U.S. paper money bills are called "greenbacks" -- because the U.S. paper currency is mostly green. But in Canada, unless the bank is simply saying "This ATM is painted green," Green Machine is not appropriate because paper money here is not primarily green. Yes, the $20CAN is green, but the other bills are not green in the slightest.

Canadian dollars.

You could argue that most of the bills dispensed from the Green Machine ATMs are green $20CAN bills, but a great deal of red $50CAN bills are also dispensed. 

Red and Green Machine?

On an unrelated tangent, the $20CAN and $50CAN bills are printed on plastic. They have clear stripe areas with hologram stuff going on in the stripes. Kinda fun. And I must say that I've grown fond of the $1CAN and $2CAN coins. They are very handy.

Mystery book cover

I was in a college book store just snooping around as my wife looked for reference books.

My eye was caught by a bookshelf full of orange, white and black book covers.

It was the somewhat familiar Penguin Books look -- not really used in the United States. The shelf looked something like this:

Mock-up of books on display.

At first glance, I thought it was some kind of play on the equals (=) symbol. A gay-lesbian-transgender studies thing -- this being a college book store and all.

On closer examination, I realised the black bars were not of equal width and it dawned on me the title and author had been blocked out for some reason. 

Scan of the book cover.

I was compelled to pick up the book and look at the spine to see what it was. It was George Orwell's "1984" -- or as it says on the spine, "Nineteen Eighty-Four." 

What a fantastic design! A book without the title or the author on the cover! But it makes sense to do that for an edition of "1984."

Even though I do not need a copy of "1984," I spent $13 Canadian on this edition. I was so taken by it. 

The best part about the story is: 

After I got home and more closely examined the book cover I noticed the cover was embossed. The logo and the penguin on the bottom are embossed, and … 

Embossed. Nice.

… THE TITLE AND AUTHOR ARE EMBOSSED ON THE COVER. 

The title and author are indeed on the cover of the book. And they are blocked out. And they are still semi-readable. 

What a fantastic design!

The title and author are there. Click for larger.

I guess this book cover is a tribute/homage to the original Penguin Books covers of the past. I'm not familiar with those book covers, I'm pretty sure they were used in Great Britain only, but in searching around the Internet, I found many representations of the old design. This "1984" cover certainly pays tribute to that design.

Picture stolen from the Internet.

And in searching the Internet for articles about this particular book cover, I found a nice article on the designer, David Pearson. This book is part of a series of reissues of George Orwell's books.

Incidentally, here -- from an Ebay auction -- is a photo of a 1955 Penguin edition of "1984."

No black bars on this one. From Ebay.

And or plus

I just noticed that the A&E channel-- home to "Duck Dynasty" and "Bates Hotel" -- updated their logo. I liked the original logo, but thought the slanty edge of the E was taking symmetrical a little too far.

The new logo is tidied up and tighter than ever -- it got rid of the serifs on the ampersand and chopped off extraneous bits. The ampersand is now an equal to the A and the E. I like it.

I admit I didn't notice the new logo until I saw an even newer version floating around. A&E spelled A+E. The same, but different. This logo is for all the A+E networks. That includes A&E, Lifetime, Bio and the History channel.

Perhaps the new A&/+E logo is taking cues (the + and the colors) from Google Plus?

Is "+" the new "&"?

This post is sorta related to an earlier rumination about the updated name for the SciFi channel.

Steve Jobs in the movies

Steve Jobs was a character.

Snotty. Smart. Bull-headed. Know-it-all.

Movies love that kind of person as a villain.

Spoiler Alert.

I was reminded of what a great villain Steve Jobs could be while watching the new animated movie, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2."

Didn't like the movie much. But it's probably my fault because I haven't seen the original "Cloudy," so I have no idea who all the beloved recurring characters are. I will admit that "Cloudy 2" has some good jokes, but on the whole, I didn't like it.

The main character -- Flint Lockwood -- is an inventor who idolizes an established inventor -- Chester V.

Chester V. is a charismatic cult leader who happens to run a big company of worshipful inventors. Chester is always smiling, always spouting catchphrases and he moves gracefully. His hands are often pressed together in a prayerful pose. He glides around as if he's actually floating. He's otherworldly. The animators did a great job with his moves.

He's a total Steve Jobs character.

Turns out he's a villain!

Flint Lockwood's dreams are crushed!

Anyway, Chester rallies the employees like Steve Jobs did and he behaves like I would think Steve Jobs behaved, but his face looks like Walt Mossberg. Which is -- interesting because Mossberg, though his tech and computer writings at the Wall Street Journal, has long been a supporter of Steve Jobs' computer company, Apple.

I have to say that I like the way Chester V is designed.

I'm only guessing, but perhaps this movie was in the works when the real Steve Jobs died. And the makers decided to keep the character but change the look. The original "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" movie came out in 2009. Jobs died in 2011.

Back when Jobs was alive, another movie used him as a prototype. The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, "The 6th Day" is about clones in the near future. I actually really enjoyed the wacky future tech in this movie. The helicopters and cars are a lot of fun. The respawning bad guys are frightening and funny.

The big, evil cloning corporation is run by Michael Drucker, played by Tony Goldwyn. A Steve Jobs character. But since Jobs was still alive and kicking when the film was made, the filmmakers decided to make him look like Steve Jobs. The character is a terrible, awful person. It's a fun movie.

7-up cans

The one on the left is the 7-up can used in the United States. On the right, the Canadian version. (I think the rest of the world uses the design on the right as well.) 

The U.S. design is holding on to the shadows and highlights that are typical of 2000s design while the other can has flattened and simplified the design. I'm particularly fond of the red dot doing double duty.

Update: In the comments, Mark Simonson calls my attention to an article on the new 7-up design and expresses a preference for the 1977 version of the can.

This sent me on a Google search that turned up an even more extensive history of the 7-up cans -- plus histories of Pepsi, Coke, Dr. Pepper and more.