Ever been (inexplicably) seduced by the sassy colors, juicy images and snappy text of a fabulous magazine cover? Then you'll probably love this most excellent 99% Invisible podcast that explores the anatomy of a killer cover.
The best covers function like an amazing old vinyl-record sleeve, telling the story of what's inside with pizzazz and panache. Yet like vinyls, magazines are starting to wane (tragically!). With old-media icons fleeing to hot new online ventures and publication circulations continuing their downspiral, a new artistic medium to sell content has emerged: the landing page.
Sadly, surprisingly few pages are doing a truly bang-up job in terms of visual punch and cleverness, but a few stand out -- convincing you to blithely click awhile before jetting off to your next online destination. Here are our faves at the moment (in addition to the Ravishly site, duh!)
The picture-heavy, text-minimal block at the top of this culture site functions as an online version of a magazine cover, hooking the reader with a few snappy images and headlines. And we love the tabs, colored by vertical, showing how many comments top stories have. The "let's have a discussion" element of a webpage makes it unique from a magazine, and it's savvy to highlight this.
This webpage, which is tied to an incredible magazine btw, goes for the wallop with a full-screen horizontal lead image that grabs you by the collar. The placement of the headlines and sub-headlines, stacked left to right instead of top to bottom, is also ingenious.
Like the magazine itself, this page aims for sexy sizzle with its bold red and black palette. We also love the neatly arranged row of photo icons at the top, newspaper clipping-esque broken-line borders, and branding of breaking news as "The Q" (Clever!).
This upstart travel outfit plays up the seduction of travel with glam destination shots and minimal text. It makes you want to hop on a plane right now, which is, of course, precisely the point.
Did we miss any you love? Share in the comments!
Image: GQ.com
