The yellow rectangle
It was mildly intimidating to art direct a book that encompassed the entire history of the Society’s flagship publication. I didn’t want a book full of little yellow rectangles, so we sequestered the nitty-gritty facts about the magazine into the frontmatter, and tried to let the covers featured in the yearly breakdown speak for themselves as works of editorial design and historic relevance. I dug into the archives, researched and collected the material in the introduction about the visual evolution of the magazine, along with the features on how many times beautiful women, animals (snarling and not), mummies, and other fan favorites had graced the cover over the years.
