I'm assuming you read her story.

You do know creative people disagree on treatments, right? Defend yours. As if we're in a creative meeting with editors.

I get what they were trying to do. They were trying to reach back to a time before the guy was a bomber. They were trying to strike a contrast between a handsome, promising young man and the "monster" he became. But with that photo, you didn't see "monster," or any sense of change. Standing alone, it was just a "hunky" (and kind of cheesy) photo.

The story was serious and really got across the turn the guy took. Near the beginning, we see this fairly powerful quote:

The cover design is both the image and text, not just the image. The cover art director has images and text to work with. The entire message doesn't need to be conveyed by the image alone.

The text conveys the "alternative reality Tsarnaev fell into" without tainting the image and hitting the viewer over the head.

I have to tell you... sometimes you have to hit them over the head -- especially with the cover. We flatter ourselves when we think that people spend much time or "mind share" figuring out how we are being clever with them. Usually, you are lucky to get 5 seconds of their attention.

was apparently Jann Wenner's position regarding the cover of Rolling Stone.

This cover is not clever or subtle, the reaction it's getting is the intent.

That's where the power of it comes from. Btw, the photo's 'cheesy' because it's one he took himself. Which adds another dimension to the sense of how he looks vis-a-vis what he did.

I don't know if the photo editors did any touching up on it, but I hope not. It's causing a stir because he looks like a vulnerable young man we can identify with, because he looks like any young man any of us have known, at the beginning of his adult life, before he has things fully figured out. And then look what he did. The photo's not glamorous. It's chilling to the bone. And ultimately so sad. I think they made a great choice here.

But, I also have been in a position of helping design print publications for a mass audience.

No matter what you do, a lot of people won't get it. If you try to be too clever or "high concept," them MOST people will not get it. It's not because people are stupid (even though a lot of them are). It's because nobody looks at or thinks about these things any more than a tiny fraction of the time the editorial staff does.

I would say that a posterization technique, such as yours, is more high concept than a straightforward unretouched photo. Yes, I'm a designer too.

Btw, your posterization screams 'blood'. The cast shadow in back of his head reads as a smear, and the lettering on his shirt reads as spatter. Is that what you were going for?

... but I probably would have sent that to the graphics editor with a note that said "what do you think about this direction? How do you feel about doing something like this, only better? Is this too graphic? Do you have a better idea?"

I have never been a "designer" per se. I have been an editor who was lucky enough to work with designers willing to indulge my ideas. They would usually improve upon them or steer me to something different, once I got the conversation going. It was great because I knew the story because I would be working with the writer. And the graphics editor really knew design.

Often, a note of the kind I mentioned above would be returned with an entirely different idea that was better than mine. That was the joy of the give and take in the newsroom. I really miss that.

It's a photo of a beautiful young man with a twisted and depraved mind.

First, I really appreciate your thought-provoking post about this. I love the smart people on DU!

I think the design goal of the cover image was to evoke/provoke/shock an emotional response rather than tell the story of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to any significant degree. I think the designers assumed that most people knew the "bomber" was a monster before reading the article or seeing the cover. And, the designers probably assumed that few people knew his backstory. So, they chose the sexiest, most cognitively dissonant image of Tsarnaev available. How can this babe of a young man be so evil?!?

Like it or not... This cover is stirring the reaction the publishers wanted and will sell a lot of magazines.

BTW, the cover image of Charles Manson you posted is interesting... I haven't read the article, but I think the cover design actually humanizes (rather than demonizes) Manson by highlighting his eyes... Notice the lack of yellow overprint over the whites of his eyes... Neither Manson nor Tsarnaev posed for a photo shoot... So, the designers could only choose from pre-existing photos.

The picture is humanizing and that is clearly the point, but while it humanizes it does not justify. It uses the word "monster" to describe him under the photo. The cover shows the mask he wore in public, this was a guy who no one suspected of anything and that is what the photo tells us.

Yet it seriously messes with our confidence in our ability to pre-judge, profile, and categorize someone.

Would you trust that face? How far?

The whole idea is that terrorists don't look like monsters, they look like everyday people.A lot of people in this country including our own government, don't want to face that reality.
Because if we did then we wouldn't so easily buy into giving up our rights,on the premise that our government can somehow spot terrorists. And as a result keep us safe.
KUDOS to Rolling Stone!!!

Tho' to be sure it's better than Rolling Stone using an actual undemonized photo. That's unamerican, esp. since he's yet to go to trial. What we want to see is a satanic enemy through and through. Someone who was born evil, born with a forked tail and an evil smile, and whose first action was to rip the cross off the nurse-nun trying to bathe his hellspawn body.

So we can know the truth.

We don't want to know *anything* about some "evolution" toward terrorism. "Evolution" is totally debunked, and anyone who'd suggest it is a commie or terrorist who wouldn't know truth if it gob-smacked them.

If we want to get the *true* story right, we've got to get the special effects down.
Maybe the Rolling Stone editors who decided on that cover should be droned? With an all-american, peace and freedom and democracy hellfire missile?