Design Assembly

Whilst browsing the shelves in a newsagent/newsstand a couple of months ago, a publication called Pin-Up caught my attention. In addition to being an original and well-designed magazine, the cover itself with its white space and use of multiple images instantly stood out amongst a sea of full bleed images.

It got me thinking…This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this ‘image collage’ treatment of a magazine or book cover. Who else has explored this approach and why do I find it so interesting?

I think it started with Tate Etc. (designed by Cornel Windlin) back in 2004. Windlin turned the magazine cover on its head by shunning the usual ‘hero image’ avenue that dominates the magazine landscape. He designed a magazine featuring a cover that not only used multiple images scattered across it in a seemingly random, grid-less layout, but also listed all of the contents on the cover along with page numbers and image captions. Taken together, these elements made a rich, dense informational cover that still looks fresh to this day. The publication doesn’t really hold the art up as the hero, which some might argue a magazine about art should, but to me it is refreshing to see various artworks represented democratically (i.e. everyone has a chance to be on the cover), rather than the usual ’story feature’.

The more I thought about it, the more examples I could think of that had explored a similar approach. For instance, there was Code Magazinetoko), in addition to books such as ‘Blind Spots’ about Nina Fischer / Maroan el Sani (designed by Mevis and Van Deursen), and the Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2007 (designed by Laurenz Brunner). All of these publications (curiously, all are either Swiss or Dutch) have caught my attention in the past.

Windlin more recently continued with his Tate Etc. theme for the Project VitraI am a Camera‘ book). book. Again, the cover acts almost as a table of contents by giving you a taste of what’s to come, an overview of sorts. Images aren’t used purely for their content, but used simply as a graphic element, just like a title or a caption. An element of the cover, but not the main focus. Windlin has chosen to literally start the book on the outside – “No time for a cover, let’s get straight to the content” (a similar idea to GTFs ‘

In a way, this ‘thumbnail images’ aesthetic bears some odd resemblence to the internet: the results of a Google Image Ripper search splashed over a cover. Most websites don’t have ‘covers’ (welcome pages) and we’re used to landing on a home page, and navigating multiple images and captions immediately. Why not extend the same thinking to print? A tenuous link to draw perhaps, but there may be something to it…
Perhaps this is too much of an analytical angle for such a simple subject (essentially picture layout). It could well be that the designers of each one of these examples chose to do it that way because, well, it looked interesting. Which is fine.