Top 40 magazine covers of all time

Judging a Magazine by Its Cover: the Top 40 From 40 Years -- by Katherine Q. Seelye

The best magazine cover of the last 40 years was Rolling Stone's January 1981 cover photograph of a naked John Lennon curled up in a fetal position around his wife, Yoko Ono. That is the judgment of editors and art directors from about 50 of the nation's top magazines, who were asked to pick the 40 best covers of the last 40 years, in honor of the 40th anniversary of the National Magazine Awards. The picture was taken by Annie Leibovitz just hours before Mr. Lennon was shot and killed on Dec. 8, 1980.

The second best was the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair featuring a naked and pregnant Demi Moore, also photographed by Ms. Leibovitz. Coming in third was the April 1968 cover of Esquire showing a bare-chested Muhammad Ali, pierced by arrows for refusing to be inducted into the United States Army.

The winning covers were announced here on Monday by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which conducted the contest as a way to celebrate magazines at a time when the industry is facing numerous challenges, especially from the Internet.

Covers are crucial for magazines because they can determine newsstand sales, which for some magazines make up a big part of their circulation. The importance of covers was captured neatly in the one voted the seventh best - the January 1973 National Lampoon cover with a picture of a gun being held to the head of a dog with the caption: "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog."

But picking the right one is a tricky business.

"It's a little bit of science and a little bit of fairy dust," said Howard Polskin, a spokesman for the Magazine Publishers of America, the trade association that is holding its annual conference here.

The association allowed any consumer magazine in the country to nominate its four "best" covers, using their own subjective criteria. The association received 444 nominations from 136 magazines and named 52 top editors to judge them. The only rule was that the judges could not vote for a cover with which they had been involved.

The Lennon cover received "far and away" the most votes, Mr. Polskin said.

Three of the top 10 covers are from Esquire, from the hand of George Lois, the legendary adman who created some of the industry's most notable covers, including the one of Mr. Ali.

Mr. Lois is still creating covers, including recycling some of his old ones with current topics. For example, he revived his Ali cover for the most recent issue of Radar, substituting Tom Cruise pierced by arrows.

Mr. Lois, however, is discouraged by most magazine covers today. "Magazines don't even try to do covers with actual ideas any more," he wrote in Radar. "You can't just slap a picture of Nicole Kidman on your cover and expect people to say, 'Wow! What a cover!' It's just another picture of Nicole."

Most of the top 40 covers are at least 10 years old.

Click here to see all 40 covers. This link seems screwed up -- probably through overload, so here's a written list. Here's another link that takes 5 minutes to load, and then you have to click from one cover to another (plus I couldn't download images), but then again, it's worth it.

The top magazine covers:
1. Rolling Stone, Jan. 22, 1981, John Lennon and Yoko Ono by Annie Leibowitz.
2. Vanity Fair, August 1991, pregnant Demi Moore by Annie Leibowitz.
3. Esquire, April 1968, Muhammad Ali shot full of arrows by George Lois.
4. The New Yorker, March 29, 1976, Saul Steinberg drawing of Manhattan as center of world.
5. Esquire, May 1969, Andy Warhol drowning in Campbell Soup Can by George Lois.
6. The New Yorker, Sept. 24, 2001, Illustration of World Trade Center (deep black images on black).
7. National Lampoon, January 1973, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."
8. Esquire, October 1966, "Oh my god -- we hit a little girl."
9. Harper's Bazaar, September 1992, "Enter the Era of Elegance."
10. National Geographic, June 1985, Afghan refugee.
11. Life, April 30, 1965, 18-week-old fetus.
12. Time, April 8, 1966, "Is God Dead?"
13. Life, Special Issue, 1969, man on the moon.
14. The New Yorker, Dec. 10, 2001, illustration of New York City map.
15. Harper's Bazaar, April 1965.
16. The Economist, Sept. 10-16, 1994, photo of camels fucking, "The trouble With mergers."
17. Time, June 21, 1968, "The Gun in America."
18. ESPN, June 29, 1998, Michael Jordan.
19. Esquire, December 2000, Bill Clinton.
20. Blue, October 1997.
21. Life, Nov. 26, 1965, Vietcong prisoner with eyes and mouth taped.
22. George, October/November 1995, Cindy Crawford.
23. The Nation, Nov. 13, 2000, George W. Bush.
24. Interview, December 1972, Andy Warhol.
25. Time, Sept. 14, 2001, World Trade Center.
26. People, March 4, 1974, Mia Farrow.
27. Entertainment Weekly, May 2, 2003, The Dixie Chicks.
28. Life, April 16, 1965, dying pilot and helicopter crew chief.
29. (tie) Playboy, October 1971.
29. (tie) Fortune, Oct. 1, 2001, man covered in ashes near World Trade Center.
31. Newsweek, Nov. 20, 2000, image of Al Gore/George W. Bush.
32. Vogue, May 2004, Nicole Kidman.
33. (tie) Newsweek, July 30, 1973, Nixon White House and tape recorder
33. (tie) Wired, June 1997, "Pray."
35. New York, June 8, 1970, "Free Leonard Bernstein!"
36. People, Sept. 15, 1997, black-and-white portrait of Princess Diana.
37. (tie) Details, February 1989, Cyndi Lauper.
37. (tie) Fast Company, August/September 1997, "The Brand Called You."
37. (tie) Glamour, August 1968, Katiti Kironde II
37. (tie) National Geographic, October 1978, gorilla with camera.
37. (tie) Time, April 14, 1997, Ellen DeGeneres coming out lesbian.

NEW YORK (AP) -- On what would be the last day of his life, John Lennon posed for photographs with Yoko Ono in a session with photographer Annie Leibovitz. One of the pictures, a naked Lennon curled around and kissing a clothed Ono, became the cover for Rolling Stone magazine's tribute to him.

That iconic image published a month after his December 1980 death has been ranked the top magazine cover of the last 40 years by a panel of magazine editors, artists and designers. Others on the list include images from the September 11 attacks, the Vietnam War and of Katiti Kironde II, the first black woman on the cover of a national women's magazine, in the August 1968 Glamour.

The American Society of Magazine Editors announced the winners of the competition on Monday during the American Magazine Conference in Puerto Rico. The competition was held as a way to mark the 40th anniversary of the group's awards.

"Both the choice of a cover and the execution of a cover are crucial for any magazine," said Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek and ASME president. "Every editor wants their cover to stand out."

Coming in second was the shot of a very pregnant Demi Moore on the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair (also shot by Leibovitz), followed by an April 1968 image from Esquire of boxer Muhammad Ali with arrows in his body. The Saul Steinberg drawing of New York's West Side dwarfing the rest of the country, published in The New Yorker on March 29, 1976, came in fourth. Esquire's May 1969 image of Pop Art maven Andy Warhol drowning in a can of tomato soup took the fifth spot.

Other covers on the list include The New Yorker from September 24, 2001, silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers against a black background; National Geographic's June 1985 cover of an Afghan refugee girl with haunted eyes; People magazine's cover from September 15, 1997 -- a black-and-white portrait of a smiling Princess Diana; and Life magazine's image of man on the moon from 1969.

There were a few ties, leading to a total of 41 images chosen.

Magazine covers can reflect the society around them, by how controversial they choose to be, said Johanna Keller, professor of magazine journalism at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications.

"They're absolutely a societal barometer of what we find acceptable to look at," she said.

Good covers can range from funny to poignant, she said. "The ones that work best touch us in the same way that great art touches us ... stirring our very deepest human emotions."

The list was decided on by a panel of 52 magazine editors, design directors, art directors and photography editors.

Esquire, Time and Life each had four covers on the list. Eleven of the covers came from the 1960s, eight from the 1970s, three from the 1980s, 10 from the 1990s and nine from this decade. Thirty-two covers were photographs, while seven were illustrations and two were text.