Bloomberg gets a jump on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with stunning cover

The Cutline

We're a little less than a month away from the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the media--you can be sure--will be covering 9/11 from every conceivable angle.

For Bloomberg BusinessWeek, that meant covering it from above. The magazine got a bit of jump on the competition with its August 8th issue cover, which features an aerial view of Ground Zero.

Richard Turley, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's creative director explained why:

There will be many 9/11 covers in the coming weeks and I'm certain that this will not be the best one of that lot. [...] I'm quite glad we've got our 9/11 cover out the way early, with a short (but good) story inside. These are the issues that posturing editors like to make big grand statements with enormous single topic zeitgeist--capturing feature wells, photo essays, first persons, graphics, essays by eminent thinkers, artist commission photography, covers and imagery, crowd sourced content... the whole shebang. The pressure to perform and make stand-out issues is intense as magazines compete for the imaginary 'who did the best 9/11 coverage' awards. I'm already finding it all a bit tiring--so without sounding like a spoil-sport--I feel quite happy to sit this one out and let others mark this momentous occasion.

The photograph was taken by Vincent Laforet, and Turley credits deputy photography director Karen Frank for tracking it down at the last minute. "I managed to somehow not know what was on the cover until Tuesday lunchtime," Turley wrote, noting that the magazine's deadline was Wednesday morning. "I thought we were doing a Rahm Emanuel cover."

Turley added that the cover design "owes a debt of inspiration" to a Spiritualized live album cover--"Royal Albert Hall, October 10, 1997."

And what would a creative director's loving appreciation of his latest iconic cover image be without a call-out to the font used in the coverlines? "65 Haas Grotesk centered," Turley noted. "What could be simpler?"

(H/T: Rafat Ali)