Typical Thursday morning at work, when my boss marches out
of his office, magazine in hand. The magazine is a popular Indian monthly that
publishes business news peppered with feature articles about sundry things. He
brandishes it at us, pointing almost triumphantly at the cover.
The cover is mostly white space, stamped with three words in
a bold, emphatic red font: WAR OR TRADE
A sly smile plays across the boss’s face. “I think they came
up with the cover story a little too late to actually design a cover,” he says.
We chuckle. It’s a weak attempt at making a statement, of course, given that the whole idea of a magazine cover is to draw the eye and get the potential buyer/reader intrigued enough to pick it up.
But this reminds me suddenly and inexplicably of a beloved
children’s magazine that totally nailed it when it came to covers.
It was called 'Shuktara', in fact, it is still published
under the same name, although its covers have witnessed a sea change. It hailed
from the land of little magazines, and was a favourite among Bengali kids long
before the likes of 'Anandamela' (another popular Bengali children’s magazine,
first published in 1975) came into being.
Shuktara has been around since my mom was a kid, maybe ever
longer than that, I’m a bit sketchy on the details. What I do want to draw your
attention to is the fact that Shuktara had a kickass cover idea from the start.
Put a comic on the cover!
Kids lapped it up. Why wouldn’t they? It gave them a little peek
at what the rest of the magazine had in store. Often this was riveting stories
about brave adventurers in khaki shorts who undertook all sorts of perilous
journeys and encountered dinosaurs and such. Kids love that stuff.
Exhibit A:
Lurid and irresistible. The title of the comic is 'Dragon-er thhaba' or 'Dragon's Paw' Although that is a T-Rex, as far as i can tell). Aren’t you just dying to know what
becomes of adventurer and dinosaur? I sure am.
Anyway, as I said before, the covers have since undergone a
major design change, in what is probably an attempt to bring the magazine ‘up
to date’. Here’s one of the more recent ‘Sharodiya’ or festive edition’
covers:
In my opinion, the new covers suck. They’re generic and
pretty badly illustrated. Considering that Anandamela has been doing similar
covers for years, and vastly better illustrated ones, at that, these are as
weak as ‘WAR OR TRADE’.
