The New Yorker Magazine has a tradition of excellent, challenging and often times controversial covers for its weekly magazine. This was evident during the previous American election, with two covers illustrating the stereotypes of both candidates (see here and here). The propriety and tastefulness of the covers created something of a political firestorm, or at least in media circles. It gave the media a chance to feign indignation, point fingers, and flog one if their own, something that seems to be great sport amongst the fifth estate. Of course, the Daily Show had the most rational and hilarious take on the controversy see here.

Politically the New Yorker takes risks not only in content, but also in style and technique.  I admire the way their editors and art directors take chances and have cover illustrations not only by a wide assortment of artists using a staggering assortment of medium; from oils or watercolors,  pen and ink, even the amazing illustrations of Bob Staake created using the 3.0 version of Photoshop (the latest version of the program is 11).  Now we can add the Apple iPhone to such august company.

The current issue features a cover created by illustrator and designer Jorge Colombo. It’s pretty amazing, he drew the cover using Brushes, an application for his iPhone. According to the New Yorker he drew it while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. Which I find a delightfully quirky and surreal factoid for some reason.  Watch him creating his cover below:

Seeing Colombo’s fantastic work being created on a simple iPhone app and the work that Staake can do using only Photoshop 3.0 is pretty amazing. It should reinforce the point that computers and software mere are tools, powerful and great tools to be sure, but they exist only in service of some other purpose. In this case we should not  be blinded by the technology and forget the meaning of the art. Photoshop, iPhones and their ilk are wildly different that the primitive brushes of the Lascaux caves, but are singular in that they are means to an end, the creation of art. I need to remind myself of this when I obsessively pour over the latest tutorials on PSD Tuts or slobber over the newest bells and whistles in the next Adobe release. Photoshop is a wicked tool, but still just a tool.

via Gabriel Campanario / Urban Sketchers

If your interested check out these related links:

• The New Yorker article on the cover read it here…
• iPhone Brushes Flickr Group, it is pretty amazing. here…
• Jorge Colombo’s Website here…
• ABC News interviews Jorge Colombo here…
• Bob Staake’s Website here…
• More Bob Staake illustration techniques on YouTube here…
• Peruse the Covers of The New Yorker Magazine for inspiration. Search the archives here…