How does one of the most iconic magazines on the planet create its covers? At D&AD Festival, Gail Bichler, creative director of The New York Times Magazine, shared a behind the scenes look at some of the magazine's most memorable covers.
In conversation with Madhuri Chowdhury, editor at D&AD, she discussed covers including one created with a live rat, an illustration of lockdown, a story about the cardboard economy and putting Trump on a balloon. Here were some of the highlights, all of which are contenders for our best magazine covers of all time list.
01. Trump balloon
"This cover's about 10 years old," said Gail. "We probably wouldn't treat him this way right now, but it was back at the beginning of my time as the design director of the magazine, and we were publishing a story as Trump just entered the presidential race, and a lot of other magazines had done stories on him, and we were kind of late.
"The story was about whether he had staying power. A lot of people wanted to dismiss him as a side show... so we had this idea to do a cover of him as a helium balloon."
Gail and her team got in contact with illustrator Stanley Chow, and below is the art direction of the balloon, with top left being the first sketch, "which is Trump on a balloon", to bottom right being the one they used, "Trump as a balloon".
The final image had no cover lines. "We wanted people to come to this and bring own preconceptions to it," said Gail.
02. Rat on the mayor
Eric Adams in the mayor of New York City and about a year ago the New York Times Magazine ran on a profile on him, which they knew he wasn't going to cooperate with them on. They initially were going to go with a photo of him (above) but when the story came in the photo director said to Gail, "I've read the story and I just really don't think that this works".
There was a lot of anger towards him at the time, people were scared to ride the subways and the city was "overrun with rats".
"The piece was kind of a portrait of the city at that moment in time," explained Gail. When Gail was riding the subway on the way home she sent a text message (below), saying that she thought they could make a fake cover, drop it on the ground in the subway, drop some trash on it and have a rat scampering over his face.
They then had to work out how to get the rat onto the cover. "We had gotten a permit to shoot in the subway," said Gail. "We then got a rat handler and had to go back and them that we were gonna bring a live animal into the subway." The permit was revoked.
They then sent a photographer down into the subway with "no lights, no crew" and a taxidermy rat. The images he took were starting to look good, but they weren't good enough. "So we decided to take it into the studio and shoot the real rat and meld these two images together.
"I opted not to go on the shoot," said Gail, who said she then spent time trying to get the details right and ensure it didn't look too stylised.
03. Lockdown illustration
The New York Times Magazine covered Covid from many angles, but when it wanted to cover quarantine and what people were experiencing it required an image that would speak to "the strange, slow passage of time".
"We had hired the illustrator, Brain Rea, to make a bunch of drawings for the inside so we decided we wanted him to make a cover", explained Gail, who says they told Brian they wanted to do something to convey the passage of time.
They explored various concepts, including the one below. "What we really liked was the lines. We did not think the snail was necessary."
They asked Brian to explore the idea of having a person drawing the lines, without the snail and making the lines denser.
"This one speaks to the way that I think a magazine cover works," said Gail, "in that it can capture a moment in time."
People really responded to this cover, she explained. "It really gave a sense of the claustrophobia and the kind of insanity that people were feeling flopped in their houses for days on end."
For more on magazine covers, see our favourite animated magazine covers and the Biden v Trump NYT Magazine cover that got us all talking last year.
Find out more about The New York Times Magazine and D&AD Festival.
