About the Cover

Interesting how the cover looks exactly like the Spring 2007 Living issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Whole article about it is being discussed on PDN as well as at the new york times website.

#1: http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/07/coast-mag-accus.html

#2: http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/biting-our-style-coast-magazine/

someone's gotta have an explanation ... hopefully before the photog's lawyer calls.

Yep, this should be interesting to follow.

pathetic.

I think it's interesting the art director is not credited here. If I were the photographer, I would want to be credited anonymously like Alan Smithee in bad films. The taste level of this production to that of the NY Times' Magazine "T" is so much lower it makes me ashamed to be an Orange County resident. Our community is lacking more and more originality as the years pass and it makes me sad that the people who hold the creative leadership positions at COAST Magazine aren't independently minded. It just verifies why I haven't picked up a COAST magazine since I moved back here for work almost two years ago except to breeze through the "Social Pages" tripping out on who all the plastic surgery-ridden people are and where they all came from. It's a waste of ink, paper, and like you were called-out by a reader of "T" Magazine, who said it currently belongs in the receptacle behind the gate instead of on our driveways. I hope for the sake of your magazine, you can turn it around an get some integrity.
Hommalomma- Newport Beach

WOW...even the bread is toasted exactly the same! can someone really be that bold (or ignorant) to rip of The New York Times? LUCY... U got some 'splaining to do.

I don’t doubt the notion that the COAST cover was inspired by the Times on Sunday. But I also don’t doubt that COAST shot multiple covers and chose the one they did because it looked best. It is, after all, a damn nice composition. And it makes me feel like eating a sandwich. But that’s not what interests me most– actually, the debate about where inspiration becomes homage becomes plagarism is sort of tired and is definately full of east coast bias. We on the west coast are frontier’s people after all, and when we get inspired we get inspired by our slightly older east coast counterparts. You guys. When the east coast media gets inspired it gets inspired by old world Europe and apparently by itself. No where is this so much in evidence as at Esquire where they have made a habit of retreading their own covers– apparently paying homage to their own, clever, preciousness– many times over the years. Their famous Passion of Muhammad Ali cover, itself inspired by a a painting by Andrea Mantegna, has lost much of it’s cultural signifigance after being done over by their own British edition and then again this month with Steven Colbert taking the arrows. Steven Colbert? As a martyr? Even as a joke it is a stretch. And didn’t New York Magazine put Lindsay Lohan on the cover as Marylin Monroe? A rehash that Lohan herself has done not once but twice. But still, that’s not the point I’m interested in.

It’s actually the differences, though subtle, between the two covers that I find intriguing. The COAST model is subdued, her mouth is open demurely, as if she doesn’t want to get any of that tomato on her lap. The T model is bold, brazen, lips wide, sexual. That sandwich is ending up everywhere, it’s going to fall into her napkin and she’s going to eat the tomato with bare hands and we’re all going to fall in love. Her head is tipped back arrogantly. Look back at the COAST girl, that’s not her style, in fact, she’d rather we look away while she’s eating. Her teeth aren’t so boldly on display, there’s nothing sexual about her. But her skin has such warmth to it, maybe even a fake warmth, or a warmth that would make the T model ask brazenly: “Don’t you work?”

The thing is this. Both covers accurately reflect their culture. New York is bold and hip and sexual. When New Yorkers are insecure they mask it with arrogance. Orange County by comparison is rich and polished and airbrushed and yet not nearly as outwardly confident. We are the guy at the highschool reunion who drives a Ferrari and really just wants to know…”Do you think we’re cool yet?” We worry about what you will think about us if we tear into our sandwhich, even though a look at our women will prove they are very, very hungry. We’ll pass on the bacon too if you don’t mind. Even though our tastebuds recognize that without the B the LT falls flat. When we worry about what you New Yorkers think of us we recede back even further, happy to look shiny but not quite as stylish as you. We like your nail polish and lipstick better, that deep red, we just didn’t know if we could pull it off.

I have lived in NYC and I now live in Orange County (where COAST is published) and I know the average all around.

I can tell you that both covers captured their people, their “in crowd”, both covers told something of the culture which they publish for, both covers reveal how women in their region deal with insecurity.

In that way, which is truly what is essential, the images are distinctly different. If COAST tried to pull off your boldness, your natural style, they would be copycats and I would have been first to cry foul. But a restructing of the image with a model who is demure, calm, scrubbed clean and tan– that is Orange County territory.

I truly find that it is the differences and not the similarities in these two pictures, and cultures, that should define the debate.

http://magculture.com/blog/?cat=7

- Posted by Luke Harper

Finally! A smart comment! Thank you Luke Harper!!!!
San Francisco

The NY Times and the Register must be using the same outsourcing company from India!