40 Greatest Magazine Covers

In October of 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors picked their top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years. According to the ASME press release,

A judging panel of 52 magazine editors, design directors, art directors and photography editors was charged with picking the 40 top covers from a pool of 444 images representing 136 magazines. The contest was open to all consumer magazines published in the United States. Magazines were invited to submit up to four entries from their respective publications. Entrants were also encouraged to nominate covers of magazines that were not published by their company or were no longer being published.

The ASME never spells out its criteria for a great cover, but the results speak for themselves. Regardless of the topic, they are all arresting. Here are a few of our favorites, along with their respective rankings:

#4 The March 29, 1976 New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg offers a New Yorker's slightly biased view of America. Those of us in the west always suspected as much.







# 7 The National Lampoon's 1973 cover read "If you don't buy this magazine we'll kill this dog." The dog's eyes say it all.








#23 The November 13, 2000 issue of The Nation was published while the results of the 2000 election were still pending and focused on what a George W. Bush administration might be like. Note the subtle resemblance to another one of our heros, Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman.





For a complete listing of the winners, (and you really want to know which one came in as #1, don't you?) as well as background information on each of the winning covers, see ASME's Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years.