A magazine’s distinctiveness starts on the newsstand. It must make a statement, not just about its contents, but about the magazine itself. We put ourselves in our Ideal Reader’s shoes, and try to give her or him a reason to pick up the magazine.
Of course, we don’t always nail it. But when you consider that a little over half of our sales come from newsstands, perhaps we’re doing something right! Here, from the last 25 issues, are the covers we think performed the best of all.
The I WayWe were sure our finance minister would take the natural next step in a process that started with Indira Gandhi. So we looked back. We knew veteran photographer Raghu Rai had some amazing shots of the iron lady. This one leapt out at us: An imperious Mrs G, blurry partymen in the background. Perfect.
Heavy MittalWe try not to do the clichéd CEO-on-the cover thing. But in the few minutes Sunil Mittal gave us, Dinesh Krishnan, our photo chief, got this shot — tie loosened, combative stance — just what the lead story was saying. The words? Mittal had given us the line.
It’s The Chair, ManWe just couldn’t get shoot time with Arvind Jadhav, so we made a virtue of it. It tied in with the story we were telling inside: A very busy man with a mission. So we borrowed a chair from our boardroom, got out the lights, and we had our cover.
Sealed and DeliveredThe Rich List is an iconic Forbes property. Vidyanand Kamat slaved over the seal for weeks, as design head, Arindam Duttgupta, bounced iteration after iteration. We did a special print run to get the embossing and the glitter right. The cover leapt off the stands, and we got a visual property uniquely ours.
Looking BackFor our year-end issue, we decided to break the template. Instead of the usual line-up, a series of lists sandwiched profiles of our shortlist for Person of the Year. The cover had to break the mould too. So, the “what was that again?” mirror-image text. Which, in turn, nudged the reader to open the fold-out, which told the rest of the story.
Black MagicWe had a package of 10 disparate stories with one common thread: Their subjects had, with the skill of alchemists, extracted oodles of cold, hard cash from some decidedly unconventional sources. Q.E.D.
Uncle Singh wants youOur subject: Successful business people who had made the unlikely move to government service. What if, we asked ourselves, the government were to advertise for those posts?
How would they ensure that they got the right people?
Back to school? Not!Our government said it would allow foreign educational institutions into India. Would the world’s best schools queue up to build India campuses? No such luck, said our story. We pulled a sweatshirt off one of our writers, re-created the logotype of one of the world’s best-known schools. Then we gave the writer back his shirt and let him go home.
First Published: May 20, 2010, 08:10
Subscribe Now