Index: ASME Awards 2010


ASME Cover Design of the Year

This year’s candidates for the American Society of Magazine Editors Cover Design of the Year are being hosted here, for your review. I wish I could say it’s a cavalcade of awesomeness, but it’s a shabby parade at best. The general interest/feature magazines are interchangeable, lazily designed and garish. Especially slack are the mainstream design magazines, mostly smothered by a bland, Pottery Barn-ish aesthetic.

Still, some really strong entries amidst the gruel: For my money New York Magazine is a marvel – smart, sharp and elegant week after week. Chris Ware’s cover for the Halloween issue of the New Yorker is a wonderfully nuanced vignette, essentially warmhearted but clinically sharp in it’s social commentary. Real Simple remains a reliable model of great taste and clean execution. The New York Times Magazine is easily the most vigorously conceptual, with the main feature driving a unique visual solution for every issue. So to them, bravo. To the rest, anywhere from meh to feh.