Ink London Creative Awards: Best Cover

Here at Ink London we’re hosting our inaugural annual Creative Awards. One of the two categories is “best cover”. We have 15 magazines up for consideration and each team has been asked to select its favourite cover produced for that title over the last 12 months (July 2012 to June 2013). The nominations are below and the results of our internal voting will be posted first week of July.

APEX, February 2013

bSpirit, Jan-Feb 2013, relaunch issue

bthere, August 2012

easyJet Traveller, December 2012, the knitted cover

Germanwings, 2013, April-May-June 2013

Gulf Life, December 2012, the Paris paper-cut hat

J Magazine, April-May 2013, the ‘you rang m’lord’ issue

JetAway, July-August 2012, the big lemon issue

Let’s Go with Ryanair, June 2013, the hot 25 issue

Metropolitan, April 2013, the sexy lips issue

N by Norwegian, April 2013, the Scream in a bed issue

Privatair, Winter 2012, the Six Feet Under issue

Thomas Cook Travel, summer 2013, the ice lolly issue

Voyager, August 2012, the Paul Merton issue

Wizz, April-May 2013, the Warsaw burger issue

Posted by AndrewH

Pop-up action

Love the new Gulf Life cover. The cover story is by travel author Tahir Shah. On the occasion of his tenth birthday, an aunt presented him with a copy of King Solomon’s Mines. It obviously struck a chord as decades later he set off for Africa in search of the mines himself (as, in fact, his grandfather had done), taking his well-tattered book with him. I’m not giving anything away if I tell you he fails to find his fortune – he is writing for Ink, after all – but the story does end rather touchingly with Tahir passing the book on to his son. Gulf Life’s cover of adventurers emerging from old books is beautifully appropriate. It was shot by Jonathan Minster, below, and conceived by art director Rob Timm, although due credit must be given to Thomas Allen.

If you don’t know him, Thomas Allen is a genius. He is a US photographer who transforms the lurid illustrations from vintage pulp novels into pop-up, 3D scenes. You can see more of his work on his website.

Putting on the Ritz (and then some)

Clearing my desk of old magazines just now I came across a couple of faxes received a few years back, which are two of the most extraordinary documents I’ve ever read. They’re worth sharing.

Soon after the launch of Gulf Life, the magazine we publish for Gulf Air, we decided to do a behind-the-scenes story on the Paris Ritz. The hotel’s PR was keen and offered to host a journalist for a couple of nights. There was a writer who’d just done us a really funny piece on the experience of being the travelling companion of a genuine A-list superstar, who we thought would be perfect. She was up for it (who wouldn’t be?) and so we booked her on a Eurostar service and off she went. A week later the story came in, which was not quite the great read we’d hoped, and then came the faxes below.

These are two bills for room service and extras. That’s 1,762 euros of room service and extras, run up in one two-night stay. On the night of the 23rd alone, there’s 71 euros spent in the hotel’s Hemingway Bar, 770 euros in the hotel’s Espadon restaurant and 134 euros drained out of the minibar. I called her: there was no mistake, she signed the bills, she said she thought it was all free. No wonder the story was so shit, she’d probably couldn’t remember a single thing that happened.

In the end, I thik the whole affair was settled by her agreeing to write something on the Paris Ritz for Vogue, in exchange for which the hotel wrote off the bill. I’m not sure what the moral of this is, I just wish I’d gone with her. (Posted by AndrewH)