The creation of The Economist’s weekly cover is an amazing dance. It involves a handful of talented people working closely together on a tight deadline with complicated subjects for a very discerning audience.
I have had the pleasure to create more than 140 covers for The Economist over my career. It is a fast-paced, adrenaline-driven, thoroughly satisfying artistic experience… not without its minor mishaps.
My adventure usually starts with a notice when I rise in Baltimore on Monday morning instructing me to call London HQ. Hours earlier, the weekly meeting of the magazine’s journalistic staff had convened in the office of the Editor to discuss the upcoming edition. A shortlist of possible cover subjects emerges, which is later reviewed by senior editors and graphic designers.
On any given week, there can be up to four different Economist covers being printed around the world. The Economist prints separate editions each week in the US, UK, Europe and Asia but also has the capability to make special editions for Latin America, India, Middle East and Africa. A typical week will have one cover going worldwide, but it is not unusual to have up to three separate covers being developed. For example, The US edition may feature American budget talks, while the Europe edition spotlights Italian elections, and the Asia edition, Japanese economic reforms.
During my phone call with home base, I am offered an outline of the lead editorial (leader) that will determine what art will grace the cover. The illustration must work hand in hand with the leader, and, occasionally, a cartoon idea has been recommended for me to sketch. More often, I am asked to conjure some rough ideas on how to portray the week’s leader in pictures.
I have worked closely for many years with the talented Graphics Editor, Penny Garrett, and Cover Designer Graeme James. I like first to bounce ideas off them, emailing sketches back and forth throughout Monday. By first thing Tuesday, the Editor gets involved in the process and a final concept and design are chosen. I now have 24 hours to paint and complete the artwork.
In my early years with the magazine I would often work at my home studio in the British seaside resort town of Brighton. Usually I would draw straight through the night, to maximize the hours available, then take a train to London to deliver the artwork on Wednesday. But one week, I remember facing an unusual challenge.
It was 1986. The reformer Mikhail Gorbachev had risen to lead the Soviet Union. He was the fresh new face of the Communist party. His open demeanor seemed shocking in comparison to the dour sourpusses we had become accustomed to over the decades.
I was entrusted to capture this modern new leader’s image on the cover of The Economist. At the time, I was a fan of a new American TV show (viewed internationally) called Miami Vice. Excitingly, I had convinced my friends at The Economist to allow me to portray Gorbachev as a cool, hip kind of guy you might see on the show.
There one problem to my scheme. It was Tuesday afternoon and I had no picture reference for Miami Vice. Remember, this was before the internet enabled artists like me to cull thousands of images from the web. Back then, to help us with our artwork, we needed to build personal picture libraries made up of tear-sheets from newspapers and magazines as well as shelves full of reference books. Miami Vice was nowhere to be found in my library.
So I had no choice but to go shopping. My wife and I visited the shops in Brighton in search of a Miami Vice wardrobe. We quickly nabbed some duds, headed home then snapped a Polaroid photo of me modeling the new gear. I worked through the night to complete the assignment using the photo as reference. The end result remains one of my favorite, and most expensive, covers.
Mikhail Gorbachev also played a major role in a cover near-calamity. This was four years later and things had changed dramatically for Mikhail and me. I was now living in Baltimore, USA, and Gorbachev was overseeing what we now know was the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
While working in Baltimore, my timetable for delivering covers to London had evolved. I would get the customary call from London on Monday to discuss the cover. I would then need to complete the artwork by midday on Tuesday, when a courier would arrive at my house, collect the artwork and fly overnight to London to hand-deliver the goods.
This arrangement had been working well… up to that point. I had completed a nice painting for that week’s edition featuring Gorbachev as a shepherd with his sheep abandoning him. I called the London office Wednesday morning eagerly awaiting their reaction. What I encountered was panic. They had learned the courier company had screwed up, and the artwork had never left the Baltimore airport. We had two hours to create a cover.
I grabbed my original pencil sketches. I hastily applied ink, and found a photocopier. I cut up the art into 6 pieces, enlarged each section on the photocopier to fill an A4 sheet, then faxed each sheet to London. (We were still in the pre-internet age). There, the pieces were reassembled, photographed and quickly hand-coloured with an airbrush.
The deadline had been barely met, but London was not happy with either the courier company or the delivery system. So a new plan was devised: each week when commissioned to do a cover for The Economist, I was to find a friend who would fly to London with my artwork in hand. The Economist would cover the round-trip airfare. As you can imagine, I suddenly had a lot of new friends.
A list was created with all the willing messengers. The list was long. Yet when it came time to call upon the volunteers, it was surprisingly hard to find someone on the list to make a transatlantic trip on 24 hours notice. We stumbled along with this quasi-courier service for a year or two. Thankfully, the magic of computers eventually allowed the digital transmission of cover artwork.
Today, I have become accustomed to transmitting my cover art from just about anywhere. I have delivered covers from the kitchen table of a dude ranch in Wyoming and a hotel room in Rome.
Over the years, The Economist has become well known for its intelligent and entertaining covers. Although the delivery method has changed dramatically, the challenge to provide an engaging front cover remains the same. It is a great honour when that challenge is entrusted to me.
Though I have done it 140 times before, drawing a cover for The Economist gives me a special kind of pleasure. When I get that notice from HQ on Monday morning that a cover is on the cards, I know the amazing dance is about to start.
Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) has been the editorial cartoonist for The Economist magazine of London since 1978. This is a chapter from his book Daggers Drawn: 35 Years of Kal Cartoons in the Economist.
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