This month’s Editors’ Group Cover Of The Month winners are Essentials, Chat and the NME.
It’s the second win on the bounce for Essentials, they’re the hot IPC title right now, as their latest monster ABC rise demonstrates. This March cover is again terrific, with a powerful use of colour, and sense of dynamism to the cover shot.
Essentials is one of the few big newsstand books to not use a celebrity cover shot, the benefits of the extra control using a model gives are clear to see in the dynamic pose, the hair flick and the smart styling.
But their killer card is still the insane number of words they manage to fit on to this thing without losing legibility or a premium feel. Nice work Stuart!
Chat’s cover is a change from their usual design structure. Here the main story is even bigger and the story over the logo fills the full width. This results in the story count going from a best-in-class 8 down to a conventional 6. But this decision allows the key content to cut through faster on the newsstand, and square up much quicker to Take A Break, the market leader.
Chat is a strong brand, so it’s a good call to move from a volume play and start to leverage its tabloid potential with a bigger splash.
Like Essentials, the NME are winners for the second time in a row, but this time they’ve grabbed the overall winners award with this magnificent tribute to the White Stripes.
Given that the band have split up, here is the opportunity for the NME to choose the defining image of their career.
And this is a great picture. There is an extraordinary amount to look at and enjoy. The dark shadows under his eyes, her knowing smile, the position of the chairs emphasising his size, whilst all the while maintaining their shared body language.
I could go on and on, but I don’t need to because the cover is RED. Red is the NME’s brand colour, so all the love towards the White Stripes is able to infuse the brand, likewise the brand has a clear opportunity to claim ownership over the content.
The challenge with this cover is the tension between timeless and timeliness. The lines themselves are full of urgency, but here their presentation is more akin to what Vanity Fair might do one month later.
The NME is a weekly, just the same as Chat. Both must create a genuine sense of event, this week the NME have been handed one on a plate, and so they’ve got away with a cool aesthetic. The challenge will be next week, when they’ve got an unheard of indie band on the cover.
All said, given that no-one has actually died, the black border and RIP detail are moments of true genius.