The best animated magazine covers of all time

Composite of three animated magazine covers for TIME, The New Yorker and PopShot Quarterly
(Image credit: TIME / The New Yorker / Popshot)

The best animated magazine covers represent the best of a venerable industry embracing the digital age. Figuring out how to transition away from print has been a challenge for many publications, and some of the best success stories have come from those who have embraced the change wholesale and played to the strengths of digital formats. As we’ll see, this can mean more than just cover that moves, with publications using animation in all sorts of surprising ways.

Most of the principles of magazine cover design still apply of course; an animated cover still needs to be engaging and eye-catching, selling the content that’s inside. However, while print magazines have an extremely strict and inflexible aspect ratio, for digital covers it’s the reverse – an animated cover is going to be plastered all over different social media platforms, and so needs to be able to work in different sizes and configurations.

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Jon Stapley

Jon is a freelance writer and journalist who covers photography, art, technology, and the intersection of all three. When he's not scouting out news on the latest gadgets, he likes to play around with film cameras that were manufactured before he was born. To that end, he never goes anywhere without his Olympus XA2, loaded with a fresh roll of Kodak (Gold 200 is the best, since you asked). Jon is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq, and has also written for in Digital Camera World, Black + White Photography Magazine, Photomonitor, Outdoor Photography, Shortlist and probably a few others he's forgetting. 

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