Jesus: The Clone of Turin

December 3, 2005 11:19 AM

Future Magazine covers: A bit self-aggrandizing in a subtile way. However I found the future mag covers engaging enough in a "lite" sort of way. (click on: "See covers from the future" option)(via)
posted by edgeways (30 comments total)

Cool post. But I'm confused; why would I want a floating bathtub? Aren't I already floating in the tub?
posted by blue_beetle at 11:23 AM on December 3, 2005

President Lohan? Uh oh, we're screwed.

[This is good]
posted by daninnj at 11:26 AM on December 3, 2005

one word: Demopublicans!
posted by blue_beetle at 11:30 AM on December 3, 2005

Esquire is clever.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:37 AM on December 3, 2005

A especially like the Playboy cover. Funny stuff, some of it witty, some of it silly (the California island, PU-LEASE).

Good stuff.
posted by teece at 11:41 AM on December 3, 2005

yes, it's witty and clever in parts ... but some of it seemed curiously dated to me

i guess the future's not what it used to be
posted by pyramid termite at 11:46 AM on December 3, 2005

A fun link - worth checking out. Too bad most 'visions of the future' seemed to revolve around the same few themes (e.g. living past 100 or clones). The others were more fun.
posted by Davenhill at 11:58 AM on December 3, 2005

I liked the Business Week story: Deficit down to $12.53. Very droll.
posted by mokey at 12:10 PM on December 3, 2005

The point, though, is to sell the idea of magazines as being relevant. One can feel the desperation underneath the humor -- paper magazines are dying out, and it will take more than a jokey Web site to save them. (They've been endangered for a while -- a filmmaker I knew in the late 1960s was hired to make a film about how magazines were great things. Now it's a Web site. Do we see a pattern here?)
posted by QuietDesperation at 1:04 PM on December 3, 2005

Mass-market magazine covers of 2105: just as bland, spineless and garishly decorated with cover lines as the covers of today. Glad to see the pressures of selling on the newsstand haven't changed one iota in the future. I guess I should be glad Seventeen, Maxim and Popular Mechanics still exist at all, as opposed to be combined into SevenMaxHome&Science, whose latest issue has profiles with the recently unfrozen cast of Desperate Housewives and 100 Ways to Keep Your Hovercraft Properly Lubed So You Can Bed That Super Hot Hunk Who Sells That Super Stylish Neo-Neo-Victorian Furniture You Need To Be A Complete Woman.
posted by chrominance at 1:11 PM on December 3, 2005

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's 988th restaurant: Why it may be his best yet.
posted by kenko at 1:20 PM on December 3, 2005

Noteably not an 'extreme' in sight, although will it still be hot to say 'hot' or cool to say 'cool' in 2105?
posted by scheptech at 1:20 PM on December 3, 2005

"Genitals: A Look Back"
posted by brundlefly at 1:37 PM on December 3, 2005

Check the flesh sported by Maxim now that the censors have relaxed decades of restriction.
posted by Richard Daly at 1:53 PM on December 3, 2005

TimeOut New York: "Why the Second Avenue Subway Will Never Happen"

And QuietDesperation -- I feel it too.
posted by Opposite George at 2:00 PM on December 3, 2005

as long as there are bathrooms and commutes, there'll be some form of magazine...what struck me most was that only one was "edible" and they all kept the same form. They'll be on electronic paper or bioengineered something or beamed to your eyes or something by then.
posted by amberglow at 2:07 PM on December 3, 2005

The point, though, is to sell the idea of magazines as being relevant. One can feel the desperation underneath the humor

Agreed. With a few notable exceptions, magazines haven't been relevant a long time.
posted by ryanhealy at 2:47 PM on December 3, 2005

Is this something one would need a news-stand to "get"?
posted by blue_beetle at 4:31 PM on December 3, 2005

In the future, Pepsi will be Blue.
posted by dontoine at 4:40 PM on December 3, 2005

am I the only one that thought/hoped this was going to be about graphic design/layout trends in the future? I'm not a design wonk or anything, but I think seeing what some contemporary graphic designers believe will be popular design aesthetics in, say, 2025, is a lot more interesting than a photoshopped cover of Car & Driver with a "see-through SUV".
posted by Lee Marvin at 4:58 PM on December 3, 2005

Get Cozy!
posted by effwerd at 6:33 PM on December 3, 2005

Man, when are we going to finally get our flying cars? Oh wait, 2015. I feel less cheated now. Which I can barely say with a safe face after seeing all of those covers.

And what's up with the "common soon" for the National Geographic and New Yorker (and others) issues? Was this site so imporant that they had to rush it out before it was done? Do they really think that I'll be tempted to go back for more in the future now that I've seen these amazing covers?
posted by allen.spaulding at 6:54 PM on December 3, 2005

Future? Elle's headline is "How he feels about your face transplant."
posted by VulcanMike at 7:07 PM on December 3, 2005

er, common should mean coming. Oops.
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:18 PM on December 3, 2005

Promise me that in the future, there will be something less annoying than Flash.
posted by tsarfan at 7:26 PM on December 3, 2005

Lee Marvin hath writ:
am I the only one that thought/hoped this was going to be about graphic design/layout trends in the future?

That leads to an interesting series of questions (well, interesting to me anyway):

Are there people out there who can predict design trends with reasonable certainty?

And if "yes,"

How do they do it?
And how far out can they go before the chance they're just blowing smoke is greater than the chance they're not?

As somebody who's been charged in the past with making predictions about financial statistics, and knowing how hard it can be to get a decent handle on a single, objective number, I can't even imagine how you'd start to try to do it for subjective stuff.

Any designers/artists out there with insight?
posted by Opposite George at 8:28 PM on December 3, 2005

Dakota Fanning will be president!
posted by cillit bang at 10:22 PM on December 3, 2005

Opposite George writeth:

Are there people out there who can predict design trends with reasonable certainty?

And if "yes,"

How do they do it?
And how far out can they go before the chance they're just blowing smoke is greater than the chance they're not?

i'm not a designer, nor do i claim to have any profound insight into that murky world. I kinda doubt that anyone would be able to accurately predict magazine cover design trends past 5 years. Whenever I look back at collections of magazine covers from a single outlet (Rolling Stone, Playboy, etc), I'm always intrigued by how incrementally the design aesthetics change; a few different color palettes here, some new fonts there, and then, suddenly, the magazine looks entirely different than it did 8 years before.

Futurism (or whatever the hell it's called) is less (in my mind, anyway) about accurately depicting future realities, but more about providing a means through which we can tacitly define the boundaries of our contemporary imagination.

Aw shucks, look at me, I'm rambling again, best get back to that term paper.
posted by Lee Marvin at 7:41 AM on December 4, 2005

I felt like 5 jokes were used repeatedly, which was not so fun.
posted by piratebowling at 9:14 AM on December 4, 2005

If you liked these, you might also like Andrew Hearst's magazine cover parodies/remixes.
posted by artlung at 7:51 PM on December 4, 2005