Imagining a post-pandemic... New Yorker magazine cover

April 24, 2021 12:36 PM

Tomer Hanuka asked his 3rd year illustration students at the School Of Visual Arts to come up with a post-pandemic New Yorker magazine cover. Here is what they sent in [Twitter thread with images]
posted by bitteschoen (31 comments total)

Have you noticed that the “E” in “NEW” has arms that lengthen as they descend? I never had! Anyhoo, these are all great to browse.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:43 PM on April 24, 2021

The elevator one is my favorite.
posted by Doleful Creature at 1:01 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]

The one with the empty chair landed hard.
posted by mhoye at 1:11 PM on April 24, 2021 [10 favorites]

I really love the one with the jungle of houseplants! There’s a real feeling of the feral, tiny universes we’ve been creating in our homes this past year.
posted by mochapickle at 1:16 PM on April 24, 2021 [5 favorites]

It's that empty chair that kills me.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:26 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

Threadreader link.
posted by ShooBoo at 1:27 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]

My favourites (in no particular order) are:

People climbing out of the Zoom screen
Returning to school to find nature's taken over
Smelling the flowers
Newspaper figure on bench.

One thing an effective New Yorker cover image has got to do is communicate its message immediately at a single glance. That's the difference between "good" and "great" here, I think.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:42 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

I liked the cinema one, with a handful of socially-distanced people watching possibly the most unrealistic escapist fantasy scene imaginable in the Ronacene.

The one with the cat looking at their departing housemate from the home-working desk is good too.
posted by acb at 1:46 PM on April 24, 2021 [8 favorites]

These lack the "fuck you, I've got mine" vibe I get from a lot of NYer covers. Which means these are better!
posted by chavenet at 1:54 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

These made me cry - not any single illustration in particular, but the weight of all of them together.
posted by Jeanne at 2:07 PM on April 24, 2021 [6 favorites]

Really liked the one with the students climbing out of Zoom. The one with the woman on the bench sitting next to the silhouette made up of the names of the deceased hit hard, though.
posted by synecdoche at 2:07 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]

Wow, the one with woman inviting her friend into her home is great. That moment we are waiting for when we can completely re-invite friends and relatives back into our lives. I love how the composition and her body language emphases the worry that the pandemic has weirded her or made her wild in some way. And it is so sweet that her friend has brought a little gift that shows understanding of the wild jungle in her apartment.

The dinner table one is also fantastic. Much weightier - probably more likely to be an actual NYer cover - but doesn't match my personal experience as well as the apartment jungle.
posted by TurnKey at 2:55 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

Unsurprisingly, the dismayed cat in the work chair slayed me.
posted by mykescipark at 3:27 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]

These are amazing. Can someone explain the box with footprints please? I totally do not get it to the point that I can’t even tell what I’m looking at.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:09 PM on April 24, 2021

Box with footprints is an elevator with people not social distancing
posted by bq at 4:23 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]

I don’t get the bicycles though
posted by bq at 4:23 PM on April 24, 2021

Ahhh thanks, bq! The bicycles was hustle and bustle to me, chaos and packed New York streets again. Maybe there’s a deeper read that I’m not getting though.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:33 PM on April 24, 2021

It's that empty chair that kills me.
posted by BlahLaLa

Me too. And the one with the cut-out silhouette of the person on the bench.

These are lovely, by the way—thank you for the post, bitteschoen.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:38 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

These are great! Can someone explain the one with the bunkbed and the cats and the person with the suitcase? Totally has me stumped...
posted by sleepingwithcats at 5:23 PM on April 24, 2021

Return to college which has gone back to nature?
posted by njohnson23 at 5:28 PM on April 24, 2021

Our last party before times was a dinner party in Feb 2020 with three other couples. Tonight we just had our first dinner party since, with one of those couples, all of us vaccinated, no masks. I actually hugged someone. Things aren't going back to the previous normal, but something like it will exist again. So my favorite cover was the one of the girls in the club, but all wearing masks. Masks will be the default in public, only to be removed in more trusted situations.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:29 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

The elevator one is succinct and luminously beautiful.

The one with the woman sitting on a park bench next to an anthropomorphic obituary section is also sadly clever -- if that's the word -- and beautiful in its own elegiac way.
posted by bertran at 8:37 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]

I went out today--my first in person shopping spree in over a year--and I saw some disco bling masks out there that would fit right in with that nightclub pic.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:50 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

These are so hopeful all together. I like the person coming over and the cinema, soon soon soon!
posted by ellieBOA at 11:07 PM on April 24, 2021

Is the girl sitting next to the dogs on the park bench supposed to be crying? (Couldn't help but notice that she was the only one on the cover not paired up with someone).
posted by gtrwolf at 9:22 AM on April 25, 2021

Is the girl sitting next to the dogs on the park bench supposed to be crying?

That is how I read the image. She seems to have tears coming down.
posted by synecdoche at 9:54 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

All the other pairings there show a parent with a child, so I would say the figure in the foreground is a little girl who's crying because she lost one of her own parents to Covid. I notice also that the statue in the fountain is missing its heart, which seems to reinforce this idea.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:18 PM on April 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

Bicycle one read to me as increased number of people riding bikes during lockdowns as exercise/means of travel/just enjoying it having to contend with the inevitable traffic-filled streets once we emerge.
posted by parm at 12:33 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Bicycle one read to me as increased number of people riding bikes during lockdowns as exercise/means of travel/just enjoying it having to contend with the inevitable traffic-filled streets once we emerge.

Yes - and a commentary on the relative efficiency, with all of those cars taking most of the street but only carrying half as many people.
posted by adamsc at 4:52 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Dankeschön für den Beitrag, Dankeschön
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

The elevator one is so good. It's a bit technically lacking, but it gets editorial illustration in such an impressive way. So does the personal jungle - her hesitation at the door, everything, it reads so well.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:03 AM on April 26, 2021