Posts Tagged ‘ Billboard magazine ’
The chameleon-like covers of Billboard magazine continue to surprise me.
This issue features the quirky singer Florence Welch. The use of a modern-style typeface—in a tic-tac-toe arrangement—creates a structured and elegant design. And even with all the cover lines stacked on the outer edges of the page, the page apperas organized and stylish.
Another Billboard cover here
A ship’s wheel is a nicely used device to section off and organize the cover lines from this Selena Gomez cover of Billboard. The typography is really cleverly designed. The color and size create clear differentiation and hierarchy in a lively and eye-catching way.
The interior spread takes a totally different approach. The stylized geometric type of the headline and deck evoke the 1920 art deco era and reinforces the Hollywood starlet, George Hurrell style black and white photograph.
The subject of this blog is not a milestone for type eh?, but Billboard magazine’s eye-catching spread announcing their feature story.
This terrific spread opens a 14- page editorial that lists every number one song that made it to Billboard’s Hot 100 list, which first appeared in August 1958. The first number one was the 18-year-old Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool.
It’s worth enlarging the image and looking at the typography of the listings that begins in the upper left corner.
The first Beatles record to appear shows up in the right column at number 104 in the list. I Want to Hold Your Hand reached number one on January 18, 1964, and was the first of 18 number one songs during the English quartet’s seven years on the music charts.
[ Billboard February 2011 ]
In contrast to Billboard magazine’s usual covers that feature a photograph of a music personality, this typographic cover does two things: First it resembles a concert poster where the headline act has top billing, so that drew me in. But second it’s a piece of information graphics that shows who earned the most money in 2010.
This is a smart piece of design, though I have no doubt we’ll be back to photos of Justin Bieber very soon.
For the record, and not surprisingly, Lady Gaga was the winner, earning herself $30.5 million.
Bon Jovi were a close second with $30.4 million, and Roger Waters, who toured his former band Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” earned himself $25.5 million.
It seems that while CD sales are declining, the key to being a musical millionaire is in touring. Lady Gaga’s tour grossed over $70 million last year.
But where are U2 in these numbers I wondered. As it turns out, the Billboard rankings reflect only US sales and since U2 were touring in Europe, their concert revenue is not reflected in the rankings.
[ Billboard February 2011 ]
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
type eh? 