Visual Issue (January 2004/December 2005) and October 2004 issue, The Believer

Visual Issue (January 2004/December 2005)

The cover design problem was to integrate the two main concepts of our first “Visual Issue”: we wanted to prominently display the DVD of short films that came with the issue, and we wanted to create an appealing context for the images, essays and interviews within. We decided to abandon the traditional Believer cover grid, which we felt is ideal for our other issues, ones that have a wide variety of themes and articles, but would not unify the theme of this issue. Instead, we asked Charles Burns to draw the 11 artists featured in the lead essay (called “Slaves to the Visual”) as fruit on vines in a “garden of unearthly delights.” A die-cut square on the cover reveals a portion of the DVD, which is affixed to the first page of the magazine. Above the headline “Slaves to the Visual,” the DVD’s center can be read as a domineering eye (to which the 11 depicted artists are slaves), or perhaps as a hellish sun (the DVD is printed with sunbursts) whose infernal rays give nourishment to the artistic fruit/heads in Burns’s unearthly garden.

October 2004 Issue
The cover of the October 2004 issue, which hit newsstands just before the 2004 presidential election, was intended as an unflinching endorsement. The Believer’s covers are normally 3-by-3 grids with alternating headlines and portraits describing the essays and interviews inside. The October cover solely depicts John Kerry, advertising ZZ Packer’s interview with the candidate in that issue. Without any other headlines or portraits, Kerry’s head ends up three times larger than usual. This emphasized the strength of our endorsement of Kerry. It also put the name of the magazine in a new context; in October, The Believer’s bold, block-letter logotype became as much a signifier for Kerry as it was for the magazine.