We are very pleased this week that Verònica Fuerte from Hey has kindly agreed to share her favourite cover with us…
"Tom Wesselmann created this cover for the fifth issue of Avant Garde magazine which was published in November 1968. As an illustration it is beautiful, it uses bold shapes and intense colours to produce a powerful image that looks very simple. As a cover it is also brilliantly effective because it immediately grabs your attention. There’s no text, nothing to hint what the magazine’s contents might be so it draws you in. But I think this cover is much more than just aesthetically pleasing and effective design; I also love it because of what it was saying at that time. Avant Garde magazine was a groundbreaking magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg with art direction by Herb Lubalin. Its articles were controversial and critical and it obviously upset a lot of people in mainstream society. Its design was, and still is, highly influential. A magazine cover which was so erotic was a very provocative act back then but it achieves that very stylishly. The illustration inside the magazine goes further and Wesselmann’s artwork is both beautiful and very sexual. It is simply a great piece of art and illustration. It tells its story in a very economic way and it suggests as much as it actually shows. The “Fuck War” spread is not only great design and layout but is also saying in print something that was then quite shocking but at the same time perfectly expresses how many people felt."
Verònica Fuerte
Hey
Photography by Enric Badrinas
avant garde mag. was and still is outstanding in design/illus. and writing.
lubalin is and was one of the top designers in the world. i had all of his mags.
at one time in the 1970s/80s. his designs rock my world. my he rest in piece.
pat taylor on