“You couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry.”

Even though it’s 2018, print magazine covers remain as one of media’s most valuable real estate — there’s something in their relative permanence (compared to, say, a link floating around for a few hours), their status as the brand’s primary calling card, the way they’re designed purposefully to elicit a response, and their scarcity (i.e. you only have a certain number of covers each year, so you can’t squander them) that all combine to make covers poignant little time capsules of our biggest reckonings:

Which is why New York mag’s choice for its latest cover is extra striking:


There’s so much here to unpack. My friend and professional designer steered me to the press release about the cover, which explains the origins of the photo and the cutting observation that “You couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry."

We asked Gabriela (who you can follow on the tweeter @griccardi_) for an official designer's reading of this cover, and here's what she said:

I ​can't stop thinking about this cover. It's blunt, judicious in color: those green eyes ringed in red, a baby cut curving around the B in Boy. It looks like one of those marks scratched in a schoolyard dust-up, or sliced with the razor blade steered by an inexperienced hand. In reality, Nicolai Howalt shot this photo after the boy's first boxing match. I'd seen other ​stills from ​Howalt's series, Boxer​, ​years ago. You can even find the original cover shot in the gallery. I'm fascinated by how the boy's expression changes after his fight—his brows, tensed with toughness, have lifted, and you can see something naked in his face. In this context especially, the set-up's brilliant.​ The line that quivers between fear and fury, the way we break boys into men—it's all right there.

What are your thoughts?? Love it? Hate it? Not into it? LMK.

Like Deez Links? Forward this to a reckoning with modern masculinity etc.