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A CENTURY OF IMPACT

See How TIME's Cover Evolved Over 100

Years

TIME's Creative Director on the Meaning of the Magazine's Cover

BY D.W. PINE
UPDATED: MARCH 3, 2023 2:48 PM EST | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 28, 2023 7:07 AM EST

Buy a print of the TIME 100th Anniversary Centennial cover here

I am frequently asked, as creative director of TIME, to choose my favorite cover in the

magazine’s history—a history that now covers a full century. It’s a question I typically
avoid, given that any one answer leaves too many covers on the cutting-room floor.
However, on the occasion of TIME’s 100th birthday, I decided to answer the question
(sort of )—by picking not just one favorite cover, but 100, one from each year in
TIME’s history.

Some years the choice was obvious: the provocative typographic “Is God Dead” from
1966; the memorable “Yep, I’m Gay” cover with Ellen DeGeneres in 1997; the
powerful black-bordered Sept. 11, 2001, cover. But some years it was difficult to pick
just one. (I have nearly a dozen favorites in 1968 alone, though 1950’s “World &
Friend”—the iconic image of the earth drinking a Coke—is the only cover I have
hanging in my house.)

Read more: 100 Years of Impact

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Many of the following behind-the-scenes stories about the cover of TIME are drawn
from the pages of the magazine—typically the Letter From the Publisher, which first
appeared in 1942. Other anecdotes and background come from artist and
photographer biographies, stories passed down through the years, and two in-depth
books on TIME’s history: specifically, an essay by Frederick S. Voss in Faces of TIME,
which was published in conjunction with the magazine’s 75th anniversary and TIME’s
ongoing cover-art donation to the National Portrait Gallery, and TIME: The
Illustrated History of the World’s Most Influential Magazine by Norberto Angeletti
and Alberto Oliva.

Here are the stories behind my favorite TIME covers—one from each year.

Jump to: The 1920s; the 1930s; the 1940s; the 1950s; the 1960s; the 1970s; the
1980s; the 1990s; the 2000s; the 2010s; the 2020s

The 1920s

March 3, 1923: Joseph Cannon Illustration by William Oberhardt

Oct. 27, 1924: Sigmund Freud Illustration by S.J. Woolf

July 6, 1925: Charlie Chaplin

May 10, 1926: John Hays Hammond Illustration by S.J. Woolf

Jan. 3, 1927: Leopold Stennett Amery Illustration by S.J. Woolf

Feb. 27, 1928: Baby Basset Hound

Jan. 7, 1929: Walter P. Chrysler Illustration by S.J. Woolf

I’ve always found it funny that for the first issue of TIME, dated March 3, 1923,
founders Henry Luce and Briton Hadden waited until the last minute to finalize the
cover—a practice that occasionally occurs to this day. Faced with pressing deadlines,
they hurriedly asked a contact at advertising agency J. Walter Thompson to create an
ornate “diddling” scroll up the sides, and organized pertinent information within
hand-drawn boxes. Luce paid artist William Oberhardt $50 for the onetime use of a
portrait of then Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, which Oberhardt had created
two years earlier as a commission for the U.S. government.

Read the first issue of TIME here in the TIME Vault

The story on Cannon was only 300 words, but that first cover image started one of the
magazine’s recognizable features: placing a frame around a newsworthy person. Said
Luce of the first issue: “I picked it up and began to turn through its meager 32 pages
(including cover). Half an hour later, I woke up to a surprise: what I had been reading
wasn’t bad at all.”

What I enjoy most about the early TIME covers is the handcrafted feel—from the
squiggly hand-drawn lines to the rough charcoal drawings, many by artist S.J. Woolf,
who previously worked as a frontline artist-correspondent in Europe with the U.S.
Army during World War I. Woolf’s work also accompanied noteworthy covers such as
the John Hays Hammond portrait in 1926 that, with its green vertical stripe, shows
how Luce and Hadden were up for trying new ideas. Green and orange colors were
both published before they settled on the iconic red border, which debuted on the
Jan. 3, 1927, cover alongside another charcoal painting by Woolf, of British politician
Leopold Stennett Amery.

It would be easy to choose Woolf’s portrait of TIME’s first Man of the Year, Charles
Lindbergh (Jan. 2, 1928) as a favorite. The 25-year-old aviator, who posed in Paris just
six days after completing his transatlantic flight, actually autographed Woolf’s
portrait. But that would overlook the Baby Basset Hound (Feb. 27, 1928), whose sole
reason for appearing on TIME’s cover was that this particular pup had not been
invited to the Westminster Kennel Club’s 52nd Annual Dog Show. As TIME wrote: “Of
all beasts, dogs are perhaps the most melancholy in their looks; of all dogs, the
slouching basset hound is the most sad. Of all basset hounds, none is more
woebegone, more tragic than a certain basset hound puppy.”

The 1930s

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Sept. 22, 1930: Robert Tyre Jones Jr. Painting by Eleanor Harris

Jan. 5, 1931: Man of the Year—Gandhi by Vladimir Perfilieff

April 18, 1932: Goliath II & Friends

Sept. 11, 1933: Gertrude Stein

March 5, 1934: Henry Pu Yi by Jerry Farnsworth

Aug. 19, 1935: Jean Harlow

July 13, 1936: Joe DiMaggio

Oct. 18, 1937: Ernest Hemingway by Waldo Peirce

Oct. 17, 1938: Britain’s Neville Chamberlain by S.J. Woolf

Jan. 2, 1939: Man of the Year—Hitler by Rudolph Charles von Ripper

As TIME settled into its groove in the 1930s, the cover became a place to show off
just how much range the magazine could cover. There was sports; amateur golfer
Bobby Jones (Sept. 22, 1930) is one of many athletes to grace the cover, and it’s no
surprise Sports Illustrated was spun off from TIME’s pages in 1954. There were strong
points of view; the choice of Mohandas Gandhi as 1930’s Man of the Year included
this bold headline: “In jail, he; at large, Wiggin, Jones, Lewis, Stalin, Hitler, Capone.”
(That one is my choice for 1931, not 1930, as Man of the Year selections used to
appear in the first issue of the following year.) There was glamor; a 1935 photograph
of Jean Harlow, whom TIME called “the foremost U.S. embodiment of sex appeal,”
was such a departure from the norm that some readers were scandalized. “Movie
stars’ faces are all right in the movie magazines, in pictures, and in their proper
place,” one wrote in, “but not on the front cover of TIME.” There was whatever the
opposite of glamor is: a 5,000-lb. elephant seal for the 1932 cover on the Ringling
Brothers circus.

There was commerce; a 1938 painting of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain is overtaken

by a banner exclaiming “Now you can read TIME on Thursday.” There was art; 1937’s
Ernest Hemingway cover was created by Waldo Peirce, once called the Hemingway of
American painters. (His reply: “They’ll never call Ernest Hemingway the Waldo Peirce
of American writers.”) And there was politics: The Sept. 11, 1933, cover of Gertrude
Stein is interesting mostly for the logo printed at the top. It was one of 11 covers in
1933 that featured the NRA logo, a symbol used by U.S. companies to show their
support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act. The
magazine devoted a significant amount of coverage to the National Recovery
Administration—culminating four months later in the selection of the first director
of the NRA, Hugh Johnson, as the 1933 Man of the Year. No such branding has
appeared on TIME’s cover since.

TIME’s annual Person of the Year franchise is meant to name “who or what most
influenced the events of the past 12 months, for good or for ill.” That said, publisher
Ralph Ingersoll wanted to make sure readers didn’t view the choice of Adolf Hitler for
1938 as an endorsement of the dictator. After seeing a cover portrait that he felt was
too flattering, Ingersoll took the suggestion of none other than his psychiatrist and
reached out to artist Rudolph C. von Ripper, who was jailed in Germany for his
caricatures of Nazis but had a New York gallery show in 1938. The show included a
piece titled Hitler Plays the Hymn of Hate, depicting Hitler playing a pipe organ that
is also a torture device. That was the image TIME ran as its cover. One reader
characterized it as the “lowest and foulest thing” the magazine had ever done. To
Ingersoll, the image perfectly captured the moment. Ingersoll, however, didn’t
apprise Henry Luce of the cover image until after it was published. TIME’s co-founder
was livid, and Ingersoll left the magazine shortly after. This remains the only TIME
Person of the Year cover on which the subject’s face doesn’t appear.

The 1940s

May 13, 1940: Falkenhorst by Rudolph Charles von Ripper

Nov. 10, 1941: Rita Hayworth by George Petty

July 6, 1942: Land of the Free by Boris Artzybasheff

Jan. 4, 1943: Joseph Stalin by Boris Artzybasheff

Sept. 4, 1944: Paris by R.M. Chapin Jr.

May 7, 1945: Hitler “X” by Boris Artzybasheff

Oct. 21, 1946: Eugene O’Neill by Boris Artzybasheff

Sept. 22, 1947: Jackie Robinson by Ernest Hamlin Baker

Dec. 27, 1948: The Night Before Christmas

Feb. 21, 1949: Louis Armstrong by Boris Artzybasheff

The first 15 years of covers were predominantly black-and-white images of men (694
of the first 782, to be exact). That started to change when editor Dana Tasker arrived
in the late 1930s. Tasker was hired to be TIME’s business and finance editor but soon
reorganized the magazine’s visuals, began taking charge of the covers, and took more
risks. One of his earliest risks was the Nov. 10, 1941, color image of a leggy Rita
Hayworth, by famed pinup artist George Petty. “Do you think that the majority of
your subscribers will not be offended by the frontispiece on TIME … displaying the
almost nude body of Rita Hayworth,” wrote a reader from Philadelphia. Other
readers, however, loved the change—“WOW!!!!!!!!” exclaimed one, with eight
exclamation points. Whatever the reaction, Tasker led the direction of a new identity
with realistic painted likenesses featuring colorful backgrounds that helped describe
the cover subject, and some further departures from the norm of an individual
portrait on the cover. One example of the latter is from July 6, 1942, a World War II–
Fourth of July idyll titled “Land of the Free,” featuring a waving American flag set
atop a pastoral scene painted by artist Boris Artzybasheff (more on him later).

The first graphic cover of TIME was the Sept. 4, 1944, illustrated map of Paris by
Robert M. Chapin. Chapin, an architect turned cartographer who was at TIME for 33
years, worked while referring to “two large floating globes—one political, one
physical—hung from the ceiling by pulleys and counterweights,” in order to capture
any angle and perspective. Another of TIME’s iconic graphic symbols was established
in 1945. A cover featuring Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov was already rolling off the
printing press when news broke that Hitler was dead. Fortunately, TIME already had a
portrait of Hitler by Artzybasheff and immediately sent it to the printers with
instructions to put a large red X over his face. It was the first cover of TIME that
didn’t have a headline. It didn’t need one. As TIME wrote: “For seldom had so many
millions of people hoped so implacably for the death of one man.” The bold graphic
symbol has since been used five times on the cover.

The last half of the 1940s continued the visual cover approach that Tasker desired,
with a vivid portrait of Eugene O’Neill and a dramatic background for his play The
Iceman Cometh; a powerful image of a smiling Jackie Robinson emerging from
oversize baseballs; an angelic painting of sleeping children on “The Night Before
Christmas”; and a joyously colorful illustration of jazz king Louis Armstrong,
complete with a crown of trumpets.

The 1950s

May 15, 1950: World & Friend by Boris Artzybasheff

Jan. 1, 1951: Man of the Year—Fighting Man by Ernest Hamlin Baker

Dec. 8, 1952: Space Pioneer by Boris Artzybasheff

Jan. 5, 1953: Queen Elizabeth by Boris Chaliapin

May 31, 1954: Native Dancer by Ernest Hamlin Baker

Aug. 29, 1955: Frank Sinatra by Aaron Bohrod

May 14, 1956: Marilyn Monroe by Boris Chaliapin

June 24, 1957: Roadbuilders by Boris Artzybasheff

March 24, 1958: The Recession by Boris Chaliapin

Sept. 7, 1959: Dwight Eisenhower by Andrew Wyeth

The 1950s was the golden age of an incredibly prolific and talented trio of artists
called the ABCs—Boris Artzybasheff, Ernest Hamlin Baker, and Boris Chaliapin. All
three were hired by Tasker, and between them produced more than 900 covers over
three decades, creating a style known for journalistic realism with a strong dose of
personality.

Baker, whose labor-intensive method included examining photographs of his subjects

under a magnifying glass, was brought on first in 1939. Said Baker in a letter to the
editors a few years later: “If [a cover] works, I will then be telling TIME readers not
only what the man looks like but what he Is like—a really good reporting job.” One of
Baker’s 300 covers is the American GI (Man of the Year for 1950). It was the first
conceptual choice for that designation, and Baker had to illustrate a nameless,
fictional likeness of an American soldier. A combat artist named Robert “Weldy” Baer
wrote to Baker to criticize his version, indicating the soldier was too handsome and
self-assured to be realistic.

But of all the artists who have painted covers the past 100 years, my favorite is
without question Artzybasheff. And my favorite of his more than 200 covers is “World
& Friend” (May 15, 1950), in which a Coca-Cola logo serves a joyous globe a drink.
TIME approached Coca-Cola CEO Robert Woodruff to ask if he would appear on the
cover for a story about the company. But Woodruff declined, insisting that the bottle
itself be the star.

This era’s journalistic portraiture set many conventional precepts aside. For one, the
cover was typically determined by that week’s news, leaving no time for the subject to
sit for a portrait. Instead, cover artists typically worked by combining references from
a range of photographs of the person. Enter Boris Chaliapin. Russian-born, like
Artzybasheff, he arrived in 1942 and carried with him a timed-drawing talent he had
perfected while doing painting exercises in Paris. He was able to turn around
completed portraits in less than 24 hours and established himself as the artist for
quick cover solutions.

But the ABCs did sometimes get a week off. Like most Presidents, Dwight D.
Eisenhower wasn’t a fan of sitting for a portrait artist, never allowing more than an
hour or two. However, Ike was a fan of the gentle work of American realist Andrew
Wyeth, whom TIME commissioned to paint the President for the Sept. 7, 1959, cover.
Eisenhower granted TIME and Wyeth five full days of access, during which the
President posed whenever he had a moment to spare. “At Wyeth’s request, Ike donned
his favorite jacket, a straw-colored, nubby silk,” the magazine told readers. “He sat
unsmiling and as if alone with his thoughts. Previous portraitists, working mostly
from photographs, tended to crystallize the popular image of a beamingly paternal
President. Wyeth showed an elderly, strong-minded, dedicated public servant, calm in
the vortex of great events.”

The 1960s

March 28, 1960: Jacques Cousteau by Boris Artzybasheff

Feb. 17, 1961: Oscar Robertson by Russell Hoban

 Jan. 5, 1962: John F. Kennedy by Pietro Annigoni

March 22, 1963: Cassius Marcellus Clay by Boris Chaliapin

Jan. 3, 1964: Man of the Year—Martin Luther King Jr. by Robert Vickrey

July 30, 1965: Chagall by Marc Chagall

April 8, 1966: Is God Dead?

Sept. 22, 1967: The Beatles by Gerald Scarfe

May 24, 1968: Bobby Kennedy by Roy Lichtenstein

July 25, 1969: Man on the Moon by Louis Glanzman

Though the ABCs continued to make invaluable contributions to the magazine in the
1960s—Jacques Cousteau, by Artzybasheff (March 28, 1960), for example, provides a
window into the world of the famed explorer—the decade also saw a wide range of
art-world greats working within the red border.

Robert Vickrey, considered one of the world’s most perfect craftsmen in egg tempera
painting, created 78 covers for TIME from 1957 to 1968. One of my favorites is his
portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. (Man of the Year for 1963). And TIME asked Italian
portraitist Pietro Annigoni to paint President John F. Kennedy for TIME’s Jan. 5,
1962, Man of the Year cover—though the artist “at first did not understand the need
for secrecy,” the magazine noted, around the choice for that title, and soon the
Italian press were reporting that he was heading to the White House. “The President
struck Annigoni as a man ‘who is always asking and always listening,” and “it was
this Kennedy, not the grinning campaigner, whom Annigoni tried to catch” in the
watercolor. Some at TIME were worried about the cover appearing grim, but
managing editor Otto Fuerbringer was immediately drawn to it. Many readers agreed,
including one who wrote that the portrait “projected a magnificent image of an
individual burdened with the world’s most critical responsibilities.”

Gerald Scarfe, whose “whose grotesque caricatures in the British press have been the
nemesis of the high, mighty and famous” was hired to create a papier-mâché
sculpture of the Beatles (Sept. 22, 1967). “Scarfe started by sketching Ringo at the
drummer’s London suburban home, raced back to his Thames-side studio to
construct a likeness on a wire frame with papier-mâché made of old newspapers
soaked in paste,” the magazine informed readers. “He followed the same process for
all four.” The May 24, 1968, cover subject, Bobby Kennedy became, the issue noted,
one of the few real people ever portrayed by Roy Lichtenstein, who said that he
admired RFK’s “pop-heroic proportions as part of a legend.” (When Kennedy was
assassinated two weeks later, TIME turned again to Lichtenstein for a cover on “The
Gun in America.”) For the July 30, 1965, cover story about Marc Chagall, the artist
agreed to do a self-portrait. Lunching with editors in a dining room on the 47th floor
of the Time & Life Building, he noted that the view of Manhattan was, as he put it,
“très Chagall.” After completing the painting and the interviews for the story, the
artist declared the experience “one of the great events of my life.”

Yet, for all the decade’s visual variety, the cover from the 1960s that remains the most
iconic featured no image at all. The magazine’s first typography-only cover was the
April 8, 1966, issue, which asked: “Is God Dead?” The issue noted: “After months of
searching for a work of art suggesting a contemporary idea of God, the editors
concluded that no appropriate representation could be found.” As for the provocative
headline, religion editor John Elson wrote, “It is a question that tantalizes both
believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect
that the answer is no.”

Read more: “Is God Dead?” at 50

The 1970s

April 6, 1970: Black America 1970 by Jacob Lawrence

Dec. 27, 1971: The Good Samaritan by Leandro Velasco

Jan. 3, 1972: Man of the Year—Richard Nixon by Stanley Glaubach

April 30, 1973: Watergate Breaks Wide Open by Jack Davis

Dec. 23, 1974: The American Pet by Eddie Adams

Dec. 8, 1975: Pittsburgh’s Front Four

July 12, 1976: The Bugs Are Coming by Roman Vishniac

Nov. 7, 1977: How Man Became Man by Carl Fischer

April 10, 1978: Those **@!! Lawyers! by Charles Saxon

May 7, 1979: The Oil Game by Michael Doret

Two years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, TIME published a cover
titled “Black America 1970,” featuring an illustration of civil rights activist Jesse
Jackson, by Jacob Lawrence, the first Black artist to earn representation at a major
New York City gallery. By 1970, Lawrence’s stake amid the canon of American
Modernism was secure. “I remember [when I found out] Jacob Lawrence was going to
do the cover of TIME magazine, I was just overwhelmed by the idea,” Jackson later
said, noting that the portrait captured the pain and passion he felt amid the trauma
of that time. “Lawrence was our Michelangelo.”

The decade that followed presented a range of challenges. How to depict an ancient
man who’d never been seen—or a modern one who was seen perhaps too often? When
it came to getting a 2 million-year-old human ancestor onto the Nov. 7, 1977, cover
on human evolution, art director Walter Bernard and photographer Carl Fischer opted
to show anthropologist Richard Leakey next to Homo habilis—really a volunteer in a
mask. “When TIME first said they wanted me to pose with Homo habilis, I thought it
was a joke,” Leakey said. “But the result is quite good: the photo shows that while the
human head has changed through evolution, the body of early man is similar to that
of today’s man.”

President Richard Nixon has appeared on the cover of TIME more than anyone else—
55 times. The most memorable to me is a 1972 papier-mâché sculpture covered in
newspaper headlines, by Stanley Glaubach, for the 1971 Man of the Year cover.
Another artist who frequently illustrated Nixon was cartoonist Jack Davis, a founder
of MAD magazine. During the Watergate scandal (April 30, 1973), his expressive
caricature of Nixon surrounded by a chaotic circle of finger pointers beautifully
illustrated the moment.

What I love about the Dec. 23, 1974, cover titled “The American Pet” isn’t the image
of the beagle staring back, but rather that the dog was photographed by Eddie Adams,
who covered 13 wars and whose image of a Viet Cong lieutenant being executed at
close range on a Saigon street won Adams the Pulitzer Prize. Ditto for 1976’s “The
Bugs Are Coming”: that picture of a wasp was taken by Russian photographer Roman
Vishniac, better known for documenting harrowing visual evidence of the rise of
Nazism. (Another cover artist famous for a different kind of work: Michael Doret, who
created the bold illustration for “The Oil Game” cover of May 7, 1979, is best known
for designing the New York Knicks logo.)

Rounding out the decade, a few grab-bag favorites: The April 10, 1978, headline
“Those **@!! Lawyers!” is not TIME’s most provocative or risk-taking cover, but
remains the only one that uses profanity. And the “Pittsburgh’s Front Four” cover
(Dec. 8, 1975) on the Steelers is one of my favorites for purely personal reasons: my
flag football team of the same name won the city recreation department Flag-Tag
Football League championships the year before.

The 1980s

May 19, 1980: The Empire Strikes Back by Marshall Arisman

Dec. 7, 1981: Cats: Love ’Em! Hate ’Em! by Neil Leifer

Oct. 18, 1982: John Updike by Alex Katz

Jan. 3, 1983: Machine of the Year by George Segal

March 19, 1984: Michael Jackson by Andy Warhol

Oct. 14, 1985: Toxic Wastes

Nov. 24, 1986: Sex Education by Charles Schulz

Aug. 17, 1987: Iran vs. the World by Allen Hirsch

Aug. 15, 1988: Who Was Jesus?

Jan. 2, 1989: Endangered Earth by Christo

The 1980s was a time of intriguing pairings, such as the Dec. 7, 1981, cover, which
featured a green-eyed feline peering out from under the line “CATS: Love ’Em! Hate
’Em!” The image was photographed by Neil Leifer, who had two dogs—and was best
known for his sports photography, including of his favorite subject Muhammad Ali.
(The reporter of the cover story was also noteworthy: Correspondent Maureen Dowd,
who grew up with five cats and went on to win the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for
distinguished commentary.)

Read more: Behind the Greatest Photo of Muhammad Ali Ever Taken

Speaking of Katz—the Oct. 18, 1982, cover of novelist John Updike also created an
interesting pairing. Painter Alex Katz, whose work generally flattened the subject’s
perspective and reduced the features, was commissioned to paint Updike, whose fans
were not all pleased with the result: “What a washed-out portrait of Updike on the
cover!” one reader complained. But Katz offered some advice to viewers of art: “You
can wreck a painting very easily,” he noted, “if you get obsessive about likeness.”

In order to depict the computer revolution on the Jan. 3, 1983, cover, TIME reached
out to sculptor George Segal, best known for his life-size white plaster people. In
what would seem another odd pairing, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was tapped to
illustrate a Nov. 24, 1986, cover on sex education. And to capture the fame of Michael
Jackson post-Thriller, the magazine asked none other than Andy Warhol. The artist
described in his diary the process behind the picture, which now hangs in the
National Portrait Gallery. “March 7, 1984: I finished the Michael Jackson cover. I
didn’t like it but the office kids did. Then the TIME people came down to see it, about
forty of them. And they stood around saying that it should increase newsstand sales.
… Then later the TIME guy called me … and said they were going to use it. I think the
yellow one. And I told him to cross his fingers that it wouldn’t get bumped on
Saturday and he said he would.”

Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude were known for wrapping Berlin’s Reichstag
building in 100,000 sq m of silver fabric, installing 7,503 saffron-colored gates in New
York City’s Central Park, and creating a floating walkway of 200,000 polyethylene
cubes on a lake in Italy. For the Jan. 2, 1989, Planet of the Year cover, Christo
“bundled a 16-in. globe in polyethylene and rag rope and drove more than 350 miles
up and down New York’s Long Island,” the issue told readers, “in search of the perfect
combination of light, air, and sea for a photograph. The result— Wrapped Globe 1988
—is a fitting symbol of earth’s vulnerability to humankind’s reckless ways.”

The 1990s

Jan. 1, 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev by Hans Jorg Limbach

June 10, 1991: Evil: Does It Exist—or Do Bad Things Just Happen?

March 16, 1992: Jay Leno by Al Hirschfeld

June 7, 1993: The Incredible Shrinking President

Aug. 22, 1994: Stee-rike! by C.F. Payne

June 5, 1995: Master of the Universe: Bill Gates

July 15, 1996: Yanks to the Rescue by Philip Burke

April 14, 1997: Yep, I’m Gay—Ellen DeGeneres

Aug. 10, 1998: Why She Turned … What He Can Do by Dirck Halstead

June 14, 1999: Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century by Robert
Rauschenberg

Most completed cover artwork is now delivered to us digitally, by email attachments

and downloadable links. But when I first started at TIME in 1998, artwork was
typically packaged up by the artist, put on a plane, and flown to one of New York
City’s three airports, where a delivery service would wait for the “baggage” and drive
it to the Time & Life Building in midtown Manhattan. While we were anxious waiting
for packages to arrive, there was always a sense of excitement opening them up.

In the summer of 1999, art director Arthur Hochstein, my mentor and predecessor
who taught me how to make a TIME cover, opened a package from artist Robert
Rauschenberg. The envelope, which was coming from Rauschenberg’s home in
Florida, contained a dozen images Scotch-taped together to create a composite for
the “Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century” cover (June 14, 1999), leaving Hochstein
to figure out how to make it work as a cover. (Speaking of making it work: What I love
about the June 10, 1991, cover—which features the word evil in black on top of a
black background—is that the same issue touts the creation of TIME’s new in-house
imaging department, the group responsible for making pictures look crisp and clear.
As TIME’s current imaging director Rick Prue says of the black-on-black design, “that
must have been a fun challenge for that new department.”)

The covers from this decade remind me of that excitement and show the great
lengths that go into the cover production. The first time that idea sank in for me was
walking into TIME managing editor Jim Kelly’s office in the late 1990s. Sitting off to
the side was a bronze statue of Mikhail Gorbachev. It was clear the sculpture, by
Swiss contemporary artist Hans Jorg Limbach for the Man of the Decade cover (Jan. 1,
1990), would require two people to move it, and it became a regular reminder of what
is possible inside the red border.

Read more: Read the ‘Yep, I’m Gay’ Ellen DeGeneres Interview From 1997

Some issues from this decade made history; Ellen DeGeneres’ 1997 “Yep, I’m Gay”
remains one of TIME’s most iconic covers. Others were a reminder of the importance
of preserving history. Photographer Dirck Halstead, who worked nearly 30 years for
TIME and has more covers than any other photographer (nearly 50), covered topics
ranging from the Vietnam War and Nixon’s visit to China to the 1996 presidential
campaign. While that last might not seem as historical as the others, a photograph
that he took during an ordinary campaign stop became perhaps his most famous.
After news broke of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Halstead asked an
assistant to sift through thousands of archived film slides. The effort turned up a
remarkable image of Clinton embracing Lewinsky at a fundraiser nearly two years
earlier. The image, which appeared on the cover in 1998, won Halstead an Eisie Award
for color photography, a win for the old-school technique, and for not throwing
anything away.

The 2000s

Jan. 1, 2000: Welcome to a New Century

Sept. 11, 2001: 9/11 by Lyle Owerko

Nov. 11, 2002: Inside the Womb by Alexander Tsiaras

Aug. 18, 2003: Ahhnold!?

Oct. 4, 2004: The Tragedy of Sudan by James Nachtwey

May 9, 2005: The Last Star Wars by Ed Gabel

Dec. 25, 2006: Person of the Year—You

Dec. 31, 2007: Person of the Year—Vladimir Putin by Platon

Dec. 29, 2008: Person of the Year—Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey

Oct. 5, 2009: The Tragedy of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

At the end of the 20th century, I can vividly remember the anxiety in the newsroom
as we started planning for coverage of Y2K. And, as is usually the case, the more
planning that’s done in advance, the less likely anything will happen. But nothing
could really prepare us for what was to happen the following year.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, photographer Lyle Owerko was in his Tribeca
apartment when he heard a sound that defied description. It was a plane hitting the
World Trade Center. As a second plane began to approach the towers, he told TIME
years later, “I heard the sound of this jet, and I thought it was air traffic being
redirected. I saw it off in the distance. The plane did this little shoulder shrug where
it dipped its wing and when I saw it arc, then I knew its intention.”

In that tragic moment, Owerko shot two frames with his Fuji 645zi medium-format
camera. “I waited until it hit,” he said, “and when it hit, I had no idea, but I thought
something would occur. And then nothing happened for a second until this fireball of
heat and debris erupted out of the backside of the building and that’s when I caught
the cover shot.”

A split second later, he was composing the second shot. “And then the debris started
raining down on us,” he said. Owerko started walking up Broadway toward a nearby
lab to process his images; he recalled the owner telling him, “You have the cover of
TIME magazine.” And he did. Owerko’s image was framed by a black border—the first
time the red border was changed since 1927.

Read more: The Story Behind TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover

Some of the decade’s most memorable covers stand out for their pairings of the right
artist with the right subject. For a 2004 cover about conflict in Sudan, where 50,000
had died and more than 1 million people lost their homes, photographer James
Nachtwey, who has dedicated his life to humane portrayal of some of the world’s
neediest people, found a mother caring for her ill son in a refugee camp in Darfur—an
image that served to personalize the atrocities. For the 2007 Person of the Year
portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin, TIME turned to British photographer
Platon, known for his intense closeups. Putin typically does not pose for portraits,
but he did for Platon at his presidential dacha outside of Moscow. (During the quick
portrait session, Platon was able to get Putin to answer a question he typically asks
his subjects: “What is your favorite Beatles song?” The Russian leader’s answer was
“Yesterday.”) And Shepard Fairey, who’d created the iconic “Hope” poster during
Barack Obama’s candidacy, was the perfect choice when Obama was named Person of
the Year.

Others stand out for thinking outside the box. After TIME named “You” the person
who had the most influence on the year 2006, in response to the impact of “engaged
citizens of a new digital democracy,” editor Rick Stengel chose to put a mirror on the
cover. After a supplier was found in Minnesota, TIME made the company sign a
confidentiality agreement before placing an order for 6,965,000 pieces of reflective
material for the cover. For a 2002 cover giving readers a look “Inside the Womb,”
photographer Alexander Tsiaras and his team manipulated layers of data gathered by
CT scans, MRIs, and other visualization techniques. And in 2009, the editors at Time
Inc. did something they’d never done before for a cover: they bought a house in
Detroit. They paid $99,000, about $80,000 above the average price of a house in the
city limits. Why? Because as Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey wrote, “we believe
that Detroit right now is a great American story.”

The 2010s

Aug. 9, 2010: What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan by Jodi Bieber

Oct. 17, 2011: Steve Jobs by Norman Seeff

 May 21, 2012: Are You Mom Enough? by Martin Schoeller

March 4, 2013: Bitter Pill by Sean Freeman

March 17, 2014: The Top of America by Jonathan D. Woods and Michael
Franz

Aug. 31, 2015: Deal With It by Martin Schoeller

Aug. 22, 2016: Meltdown by Edel Rodriguez

Feb. 27, 2017: Nothing to See Here by Tim O’Brien

Oct. 15, 2018: Her Lasting Impact by John Mavroudis

Sept. 23, 2019: How Earth Survived by Toshihiko Hosaka

The Aug. 9, 2010, cover is probably the most powerful, shocking, and disturbing in
the magazine’s century of history. It is a portrait of Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan
woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off
for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the photo with South African
photographer Jodi Bieber, saying she wanted the world to see the effect a Taliban
resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan. “I thought long and hard about
whether to put this image on the cover of TIME,” said managing editor Rick Stengel,
who also consulted with several child psychologists about its potential impact as an
image that would be seen on newsstands and in homes around the world.

It was late on a Wednesday evening in 2011 when news came that Apple founder
Steve Jobs had died. An hour earlier, we had just sent an issue to the printing press,
and I was in the Lincoln Tunnel heading home. It was with a great sense of sadness
that I turned around and rushed back into midtown Manhattan. With a small team
and in six hours, we created an issue with 21 pages on Jobs and his impact. The cover
photo was taken by Norman Seeff in 1984. The pair were in Jobs’ living room just
talking about “everyday stuff,” as Seeff would put it. Seeff recalls, “he rushed off, and
came back in and plopped down … with a Macintosh in his lap. I got the shot the first
time.”

A more unusual but likewise fitting—and fast—portrait appeared on the cover for our
story on the impact of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during Brett Kavanaugh’s
Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Using phrases from Ford’s testimony, San
Francisco–based artist John Mavroudis had one day to re-create her likeness by
drawing each letter by hand. “This particular process is like putting a jigsaw puzzle
together, but with an infinite number of possibilities,” says Mavroudis.

One of the decade’s most conversation-starting covers, photographed by Martin

Schoeller, was May 21, 2012’s “Are You Mom Enough?” Using religious images of the
Madonna and Child as reference, Schoeller captured four mothers who subscribed to
attachment parenting, the subject of the cover story, breastfeeding their children. An
even more share-worthy moment came when TIME first introduced candidate Trump
to readers in August 2015, when Schoeller and then editor at large Paul Moakley
brought a live bald eagle to Trump Tower in New York City for a portrait. A clip of the
bird nipping at the Republican candidate went viral.

Read more: Watch Donald Trump Dodge a Bald Eagle

During the 2016 campaign, we produced seven covers featuring Trump and created an
original visual language for this President with the artwork of artist Edel Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, who worked as an art director at TIME in the 1990s, has a strong, simple
graphic style that immediately grabbed worldwide recognition with the “Meltdown”
cover (Aug. 22, 2016), a reflection of Trump’s slumping campaign following the
Republican National Convention. “By condensing his look down to the basic
elements, done through color, one could focus more on the concept behind the image
or what the President symbolized, rather than what he looked like,” says Rodriguez.

My favorite Trump cover, though, would have to be “Nothing to See Here” from Feb.
27, 2017. I believe the strongest TIME covers leave space for a variety of perspectives;
this one might depict the chaos Trump created, or his resolution amid the chaos that
predated him in Washington. That image was created by longtime collaborator Tim
O’Brien, who has painted more TIME covers (35) in the past 30 years than any other
artist. It was the first of what would become a series of four paintings from O’Brien
depicting Trump in a growing storm within the Oval Office.

The 2020s

Nov. 2, 2020: Vote by Shepard Fairey

Oct. 25, 2021: Delete “Facebook”?

March 28, 2022: The Resilience of Ukraine by JR

For the first time in 97 years, TIME’s logo didn’t say “TIME.” To underscore the
importance of voting in the 2020 election, TIME was changed to VOTE for all U.S.
editions of the Nov. 2 issue. “Even though the subject in the portrait knows there are
additional challenges to democracy during a pandemic,” said artist Shepard Fairey of
the image he created for the cover, the person is determined to use their “voice and
power by voting.”

Sometimes, a cover’s impact comes from the process of its creation. This was evident
in the March 28, 2022, cover. French artist JR, who had created two previous TIME
covers, traveled to Ukraine and enlisted local residents to create a 148-ft. interactive
portrait of a 5-year-old refugee named Valeriia, using an image by Ukrainian
photographer Artem Iurchenko. The larger-than-life photo was printed in Paris and
transported to the war-torn country, where JR, his team, and 100 volunteers unfurled
it in front of the National Opera in Lviv on March 14. A drone captured the scene
from above. “This little girl is the future and, in this war, she reminds us what
Ukrainians are fighting for,” wrote JR. Afterward, in a conversation with her over
video, JR told her, “Your smile is shining to the entire world.”

— with reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Julia Zorthian

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