This national poll celebrates and awards the best magazine covers of the past year.
Last year’s inaugural event, which is open to UK print magazines, saw six category winners, plus the Magazine Cover of the Year, for which 30,000 consumer votes were registered. This year the categories were expanded to include Entertainment; Fashion; Lifestyle; Sports; Specialist; Youth; Technology and Trade. A panel of industry heavyweights met to select the shortlist from the 135 magazine covers that were entered across the 8 categories; with only 5 covers per category making it through this initial judging process. Now it is over to the general public to vote for their favourite covers over the next six weeks as the voting website goes live at www.themaggies.co.uk
Andrew Burge, CEO of iSUBSCRiBE, who initiated the annual awards, said: “This is the second year of The Maggies, and I think we’ve come a really long way. The range is fantastic, and the calibre’s absolutely second to none. In judging the shortlist I think we’ve come up with a really good selection and it’ll be fascinating to know what the public make of it.”
Jim Bilton (pictured), who has chaired the judging panel for the past two years, said, “We’ve had a lot more entries this year. Clearly The Maggies is growing in popularity and profile within the business.”
Peter Genower, ex editor of Chat, TVTimes and What’s on TV, said of the criteria for selecting the shortlisted covers, “The most effective selling covers are often those that combine aesthetic value with raw commercial appeal. Successful covers sparkle with energy and include six guiding principles. They have a great central image, and grabbing coverlines offering tangible benefits - ‘what’s in it for me?’. Covers need impact; they stand out from the crowd, often with a clean simplicity, and reinforce the brand values and personality. But a truly great cover has something irresistible about it, something that has the potential buyer saying ‘wow!’. The inspired cover that gets the cash tills ringing, dares to be different and often breaks accepted rules. The shortlisted entries for this year’s The Maggies show that British magazine covers lead the world in commercial guts and design flair.”
Chris Llewellyn, President & CEO of FIPP, on why The Maggies is so important to the magazine industry, said: “Kate White, Editor of Cosmopolitan, the largest women’s title in the USA, once said that she spends 80% of her time on the front cover. The toughest decision a magazine editor has to make every issue is ‘What’s on the cover?’. Great covers have to satisfy so many criteria – they must be creative, ideally controversial or comical, but above all, commercial because magazine front covers are not isolated works of art, they have to stand out on a crowded newsstand. Part art, part science, it’s hard to get it absolutely right. That’s why The Maggies have an important role to play in showcasing and celebrating great covers.”
Sally Cartwright, ex Publishing Director of HELLO! Magazine, agrees, “Covers are absolutely crucial. Unless somebody likes your cover at least enough to pick it up and look and see what’s inside the magazine, you’ve lost. Without a good cover you just aren’t going to sell your magazine.”
What the judges thought on the quality of entries this year…
Barry McIlheney, CEO of PPA: “It’s been incredibly difficult to pick the best covers in any of these categories, because all of them have something going for them. Some of them are absolutely outstanding, and to boil that down is a really difficult job. It’s a fantastic standard and makes me think the magazine industry is in pretty good shape.”
Peter Jackson, twice voted “Magazine Editor of the Year” and a leading magazine creative consultant: “I think there’s more diversity this year. I think a lot of the smaller magazines are really showing the way to the big magazines, they’ve been more adventurous.”
Eve Pollard, second ever female editor of a national newspaper: “The calibre of entrants has been very, very high. It’s been a tough year for magazines, as for everyone else, and you can see people have worked hard on selling their magazine, and there’s only one place to sell it, which is the cover.”
