Chance Encounters On The Magazine Rack

This is just a quick reminder that as graphic designers, we would be very foolish to think that anything we do gives us any control over our visual surroundings, or helps “fight ugliness”. Anyone who has seen Helvetica, the documentary film by Gary Hustwit, knows whose quote I’m referring to. The most we can hope to achieve is nudge a little of the visual chaos in the right direction. My last post about the Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines made me discover these two images on Grids, the official Society of Publication Designers blog. They feature chance encounters between unrelated magazine covers creating new unexpected readings. I hope you have as much fun discovering them as I had.

Wired + Wallpaper =

The big “Fear” on the Wired cover left looks like it’s set in Basic Commercial; “USA” at the right seems to be Univers or something similar.
One image was posted by Jeremy LaCroix who swears he did not stage this.

Coincidence? Or is someone up at Farley’s – most awesome Magazine Rack in San Francisco – messing with our minds?

Best PC Upgrades? OSX

PC World (left) intensively uses Interstate by Tobias Frere-Jones; MacWorld adopted the inescapable Gotham by Hoefler and – indeed – Frere-Jones. Could there be an extra layer of meaning referring to Tobias’ move to H&FJ in 2004? ;)
The other image, posted to the SPD blog by JoshKlenert, proves that

[Y]ou can design the best cover possible, but you just can’t guarantee where it will show up on the news stand.

Visual artist Charis Tsevis originally posted this image from The Chive to Facebook.
Header image: ƒStop Image 415.003, from Tokyo Japan. Photographer: Martin Holtkamp

Tags: magazine, magazine cover