As anyone who knows Sell! Sell! will tell you, we are massive fans (borderline stalkers) of American art director George Lois. As well as his excellent advertising and design work, he created some of the most iconic magazine covers of the 20th century for Esquire in the 60's, including this one featuring actress Virna Lisi (on the left).
Lois created bold, striking images, that crackled with his trademark visual wit, covering taboo subjects and political themes as well as pop culture. For some reason, Esquire have reprised this particular cover on the current US issue. The modern version doesn't even come close to matching the power of the Lois original. For this kind of thing to work, surely it needs to add something to the original (other than an obligatory flash of Jessica Simpson's cleavage). Or it needs to be at least as impactful and as well shot/cropped/framed, otherwise it just comes off as a pale imitation. As this does.
SPOTTED ON THE EXCELLENT MAG CULTURE
She is very sexy girl but but she is very very prett.girl
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice little piece on George Lois and his Esquire covers here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/04/21/080421ta_talk_paumgarten
(Sorry, far too much of a luddite to hyperlink)
That's a good piece, thanks for the link. Great to hear he's going to have an exhibition of his covers at MoMA.
ReplyDelete