Covers known and/or loved

Abstract

John Cage's 4' 33''from 1952 is a musical piece bereft of any performed sound; the Beatles' 1968 White Album had a cover that was virtually blank; Yasmina Réza's 1994 play Art debates the meaning, if any, of a plain white canvas. This week sees The Lancet move on from several decades of equating cover and contents by adopting a minimalist approach to the first page it sets before readers. In early journals and magazines 1 Grow G Magazine covers and cover lines: an illustrated history. J Magazine New Media Res. 2002; (accessed May 19, 2004).www.aejmcmagazine.bsu.edu/Testfolder Google Scholar the cover often seems to have been a simple title page. The idea that readers might want to know what they could find beneath came later. But The Lancet put content first in its early days. Later, for many years, the journal followed the former ways of The Times of London and regaled readers first with classified advertising. Then we went back to content on one page and, later, two (figure).