50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Top 10 Magazine Covers

#3. Rolling Stone
May 3 — 17, 2007

This commemorative issue cover was designed by Chip Kidd, who is the undisputed heavyweight champion of book-jacket design. His work demonstrates a keen cultural barometer, using artifacts and visual linguistics — Kidd is the designer equivalent of Marcel Proust. Magazine covers are a different beast, but here Kidd makes the leap by using the same insights that inform his book jackets. He can't use any single musician or group — the magazine had already done a Sgt. Pepper's-style photocollage for its 1,000th issue cover — so he cleverly zooms in on the famous Rolling Stone logo, making a graphic statement that is at once starkly simple and supremely confident. It underscores Rolling Stone's cultural impact by pointing out that a reader need only see a letter or two of the logo to identify the magazine. Special foil printing makes the whole package feel more valuable. Telegraphic design at its best.

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