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The first speaker was Chris Clarke, editorial creative director of The Guardian (see ‘The Long Look’ in Eye 93). His favourite cover was the November 2001 Sleazenation with its ‘I’m With Stupid’ typographic cover designed by Scott King. Chris experienced the power of the cover first hand as a W. H. Smith sales assistant. He later ‘stole’ the idea for a poster that won him an award from Don’t Panic in 2008.

SICILIA

Chris was followed by designer Giulia Garbin, former art director of Luncheon, who presented a rapid cavalcade of Italian magazines, a reverse top ten, with Sicilia at no. 1. Founded by designer and writer Bruno Caruso (1927-2018), Sicilia ran from 1953 to 1982. Numbers one to nine on Giulia’s list were: Terrazzo (1988-96), Pagina (1960-63), Graphicus (from 1920), Scinautico (1960-63), L’architettura (1955-2005), Pirelli (1948-72), Stile Industria (1954-63), Linea Grafica (1946-2008) and Stile (1941-47).
(See also ‘Type and the city’, about Giulia, in Pulp no. 6.)

FEMINA

The next presenter was writer, designer, artist and academic Anoushka Khandwala, who showed us a cover of Femina, a large circulation women’s magazine published in India, with actor Shabana Azmi on the cover. She contrasted this warm, positive image with the cover of the June 1985 edition of National Geographic, which used Steve McCurry’s famous image of Sharbat Gula, a young Afghan girl. Discussing the notion of image ‘ownership’, among other issues, Anoushka quoted from Edward Said’s Orientalism.

EGOÏSTE

Designer Mathias Clottu, a Swiss art director and designer based in London, who worked with John Morgan Studio early in his career, chose a 1984 edition of Egoïste magazine. The cover used a monochrome Helmut Newton portrait of Hollywood star Ava Gardner. Mathias also discussed the mag’s contents, including some striking full page adverts for major brands, all in inky black and white.

EROS

After the break, during which the Eye team sold a decent number of back and current issues of Eye, we welcomed Kuchar Swara (Telegraph) whose favourite magazine cover was that of Eros no.2, summer 1962. As some readers may recall from Steven Heller’s article in Eye 25, this was art-directed by Herb Lubalin and edited by Ralph Ginzburg, also the publisher. Kuchar noted that Ginzburg was imprisoned in 1963 for sending Eros’s erotic content through the mail, while Hugh Hefner was acquitted from a similar charge concerning the more explicit Playboy. After talking to type historian (and Eye contributor) Paul Shaw in the interval, Kuchar was able to confirm that the Eros masthead was drawn by Lubalin’s colleague John Pistilli.

GUARDIAN

Natasha Tomalin-Hall (creative director of YOU magazine, Mail on Sunday) made ‘anger’ a theme of her presentation, choosing a Guardian ‘Age of rage’ supplement cover designed by fellow presenter Chris Clarke. This was a pleasing coincidence, since Natasha chose the cover before anyone knew Chris would be at the same event. She showed several examples of covers (Time Out New York, Stylist, Guardian Saturday, Atlantic) that struggled with the challenges of communicating the subject – particularly female rage – through the medium of a mag cover.

TOWN

Simon introduced Peter Allen with some warm words for Magneto, the upmarket car magazine that Peter art directs. Peter’s favourite magazine cover is the Christmas edition of Town designed by Tom Wolsey (see ‘Town shaped the Sixties’ in Eye 96), which he praised for the subtle use of a gorgeous, inscrutable colour photo by Saul Leiter and the absence of cover lines.

ROLLING STONE

Cath Caldwell returned to the subject of cover lines in her wide-ranging presentation, which touched on a host of favourite mag covers, including some of her own work for Elle, before settling on the 22 January 1981 cover of Rolling Stone. This is the cover with Annie Liebovitz’s double portrait of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, taken hours before Lennon was shot on the streets of New York in December 1980. Featuring no cover lines apart from the masthead and dateline, this tragically topical edition sold nearly one-and-a-half million copies.

PANEL

The evening concluded with interesting questions from the audience, touching on nostalgia (good and bad), and the difference between designing a cover for a newspaper supplement, wrapped inside newsprint, and a newsstand magazine that has to slug it out against rival mags, an ongoing conflict neatly referenced in Scott King’s cover for Sleazenation.

On 13 October at 6pm Eye presents ‘Type Tuesday North: My favourite logo’ at Manchester Metropolitan University in collaboration with MMU and SEA Design. Look out for social posts and future newsletters with more details. The next Type Tuesday at St Bride Library in London will be at 6:30pm on 24 November 2026, with an illustration theme.

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