5 Japanese magazine covers

As a gathering of publishers in Japan collaborates to take sales online, this (perversely perhaps) seems like a good a time as any to celebrate good magazine cover design! Here's my entirely random and entirely personal selection of 5 excellent Japanese magazine covers worth noting:

WIRED: Wired Japan is no more. Wired's fortunes have revived of late, the US edition looking good again and the UK edition relaunching in 2009, but the Japanese edition remains a thing of the past. (In the digital world, the past is as far away as last year - though actually Wired Japan closed back in 1998, the year of this January issue.) This cover is an example of its smart design: mirrored paper behind an eye-catchingly placed manga stalwart Atom Boy. Clean, bright, modern, impactful - and a design-style that is missed. Art director: 木継則幸 (Kitsugi)

BT: Still publishing, BT (Bijutsu Techou) is a small-format publication about art (paperback book size, and with as many pages) which frequently has fold-outs or specials as inserts. This October 2003 issue had a giveaway enclosed in a special box cover: a plastic model of a Takashi Murakami artwork. If giveaways are the spirit of commercialism, this was a perfect tie-in. (I've no idea if it is collectable, however.) The special box design, and the shaped window within the cover-art show concept and design working together. Art director: 中垣信夫 (Nakagaki)

VOGUE NIPPON: This September 2008 issue is not one I have, but I like Vogue Nippon's decision to run the logo OVER the model faces, a reversal of the usual design 'rule'. (It did this at leastthroughout 2009, as you can see here, but the current Feb 2010 issue has the model's head over the logo - I hope they're not retreating form the rule-breaking.) It lead to some close calls as to whether it works or not, though in the end it did, and here it's definitely working. The framing of the eyes by a letter in the logo becomes part of the design. Meanwhile, Vogue US and Vogue UK both resemble something more akin to a regular issue of Elle etc. Despite Vogue's history of good covers, those two editions aren't even as adventurous as other mainstream magazines like Esquire. Leave it to the Asian (and some European) Vogues to impact with design.

STUDIO VOICE: One of the magazines that closed last year and now has a different online-only presence. It's layout and themes had become repetitive, so even if it could still have occasional design impact, it's unclear to me if that repetiton or just changing times were the reasons for readers turning away: I hadn't bought an issue for years. However, it had published for 30+ years, and let's go back to this 1991 issue as a sample: in a Japan-esque pose, Yukio Mishima graced the cover and inside spreads, in a still-celebrated Eiko Hosoe photograph. Art director: 藤木やすし (Fujiki)

KIMONO: The definition of a magazine is a "periodical" - something published at regular intervals. In that case, does this count as something else - a book series, perhaps - despite it's magazine look, feel, size and approach? Issue 9 came out in December 2009, but issue 8 in June 2008, while this is issue 6 - from 2005. But if it looks like a magazine, handles like a magazine and is available in magazine shops, I'll call a spade a spade. Its modern look at the kimono follows changing trends among fashionable wearers - a steady (or steadily increasing?) number. (More on kimono in a later post.) Uncluttered even with its handwritten text, stylish, with just the right forward-looking approach to it's new tradition. Art director: 高木千寿 (Takagi)