I’ve been doing some research for a project and I came across a very sweet collection of Time Magazine covers, basically the whole history of their visual identity.

Check it out here. There are all kinds of other publications on the site, so be prepared to waste a lot of time if you’re into visual history.

I like the internet and all, it obviously makes research such as this much easier, but I hope we never see the day where printed newspapers and magazines cease to exist. Digital is just not the same in my opinion. I often wonder what our generation will leave behind. Museums have innumerable written correspondance between friends, lovers and haters. Children find vintage records, baseball cards and other priceless ephemera in their parents and grandparents attics. What will I leave behind? A hard drive with a bunch of files on it? Yeah, that’s just not that exciting at all.

Also, I feel that the Time covers aren’t quite as good the more modern they become. Older issues had lively illustrations and ideas, new ones look more like photo collages. Wonder if my opinion has anything to do with the fact that I’m an illustrator, haha. Obviously I’m really drawn to the individual portraits of the older covers and would love to do that kind of work.

A few of my favorites are: