The New Yorker marks 100 years with a colorful trip through nearly 700 covers

Beginning with Rea Irvin’s original Eustace Tilley sketch on Feb. 21, 1925, The New Yorker has published thousands of memorable covers, from the witty to the somber to the instantly iconic. To this day, The New Yorker cover remains one of the high-profile assets in publishing—a resolute monolith in a fracturing media world. No surprise, then, that the magazine focuses on scores of those covers in a rare commercial breaking today, celebrating its 100th anniversary. The spot—created by Condé Nast Creative Marketing, editors from The New Yorker and Publicis Groupe agency Le Truc—presents nearly 700 covers across 90 seconds to tell the magazine’s story. It cartwheels through the decades, with one striking image after another emphasizing The New Yorker’s broad range of editorial content, from the political to the personal—everything that “shapes your world.” With animation by Roof, music by Human (an interpretation of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”) and a voiceover by staff writer Jia Tolentino, the spot highlights The New Yorker’s history of depth, rigor and humor to envision its future—as a continuing guidepost to the ever-evolving present. As the VO says: “The more every single thing around you is changing, the more you want to stop and see things clearly.” The spot will run on connected TV (Amazon Prime, Hulu, Peacock, Roku, Max, etc.) starting Monday. There are also 30- and 60-second versions. At its conclusion, the ad, not incidentally, urges the viewer to subscribe. Ad Age spoke last week with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker since 1998, about the challenges, arguments and discoveries involved in distilling 100 years into a minute and a half. The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. It must be daunting, trying to capture 100 years in 90 seconds. What were the early discussions like? Well, it’s tricky. I think there are certain publications you can capture in one word. I think if you said Vogue, fashion would be the word. Back in the day, Sports Illustrated, it wouldn’t be hard to come up with the word sports. Vanity Fair—maybe that would be Hollywood. That begins to get complicated. But with The New Yorker, it’s really complicated. In a given day or week, we have pieces about politics, global affairs, humor. We’re a very complicated, delightful, serious, I hope glorious publication. To capture that, we relied heavily in this film on very distinctive covers. We’ve published, I think, 5,000 covers over the years. The ad features nearly 700 covers. If you don’t blink. Covers are a nice solution. They’re an iconic asset for the magazine, but they can also practically tell the story of a century. They can try pretty damn hard. I think it succeeds here because it reflects a lot of moods. It reflects a sense of the city—sometimes pure delight, sometimes something more serious, a moment in time. It’s one of the most important assets we have. And of course, the covers are completely distinctive, both in the digital age and before, because we don’t rely on photographs. We rely on artists and cartoonists. You had thousands of options here. Did you start with a narrative and choose covers from there, or did you know you wanted to include certain iconic covers from the start? I don’t think we knew what we were doing at first. We threw a lot of material at the wall and had a series of discussions with our creative partners, the Condé Nast Creative Marketing Team and this group called Le Truc—which, the last time I looked, in French means “The Thing.” We’d never done this before. It was a lot of serious discussions about how we want to put ourselves forward. And not all of us are used to finding a solution to that in 30 seconds or 60 seconds or 90 seconds. Is there someone there who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the covers? The two people with the best and most comprehensive knowledge of the covers are Françoise Mouly [The New Yorker’s art editor] and yours truly. Françoise, because it’s her job. And then, I’ve been at this for a while—that chunk of years, I’m experienced in. And then I’ve studied every cover and every passage and change of mood since we began in February of 1925. Did you have any help from AI in sifting through the material? (laughs) No. No, no, no. There are a lot of political moments in here. The ad pauses on Putin, Musk, Trump, Hillary Clinton. How did you think about the political narrative? I think it’s meant to suggest moments of triumph, heartbreak, crisis, difficulty, the times we live in and the times that we lived in in the past. Obviously one of the most distinctive covers published in my time was the 9/11 cover by Françoise and her husband, Art Spiegelman, known in some quarters as the Black Cover. It appears briefly near the beginning. I guess I was expecting that one to be more prominent. Well, there you go. There were lots of suggestions and back-and-forths and semi-polite disagreements. But that’s the editorial process around here all the time. Obviously, Eustace Tilly is ubiquitous in here. We also play with Eustace Tilly. That was the first image on the cover. One of the things Françoise started doing many years ago was having people reimagine Eustace Tilly. R. Crumb imagined Eustace Tilly as kind of a—I don’t know what you’d call him—kind of a punk. And he’s been reimagined in terms of gender and ethnic background and so on. There’s very few artists, at this point, who haven’t taken a crack at him. There’s one completely digital Eustace Tilly in there, too. We’ll do anything. I noticed Kadir Nelson kind of gets his own moment in here. The very first image that appears is a Kadir cover, and many others. Did you want to recognize him specifically? Kadir Nelson is really an interesting figure. There’s some aspect of him that’s bringing Norman Rockwell, if you remember his work, into the Black experience in America. There are tropes that he uses and reference points—obviously he has a rich knowledge of the history of illustration and art and portraiture. And it’s not just political actors but normal life—at the beach, on the stoop, looking out a window. Just recently he had a pigeon flying out of a coop on the top of a building, which is a very New York thing to see. I think the person who’s had the most covers, certainly in modern times, is Barry Blitt. Not only is he a wonderful artist, he also has the talent to pick up on the political moment and turn it into satire. And he’s able to work very quickly. Given an assignment on a Wednesday, he can have something by Thursday. That’s hard to do. And he executes it with real beauty and precision. Any other covers in here that are personal favorites of yours? I love all my children equally. Ha, that can’t be true. (laughs) I do own a couple of them. I have an interest in Russia because I lived there for four years as a reporter when I was younger. I own Barry Blitt’s Putin as Eustace Tilly—with the logo, by the way, in Russian. There was a question of whether we could do that because of the Post Office. I forget how that got ironed out. Any other Easter eggs in here that you think are nice moments? I love seeing Maira Kalman, whom we haven’t had in a while. She’s an incredibly beautiful painter. Spiegelman is just so funny and daring and wicked and terrific. One of the wittiest cover artists I’ve ever seen in operation—and he’s got a series of covers coming for us soon—is Christoph Niemann, who has a kind of graphic wit and genius that is all his own. Chris Ware. There’s a lot. Using covers means you can’t touch on all the great writers and stories over the years. Was it tempting to go another way so you could celebrate those? [The ad is] a visual format. We’ve had lots of photography and plenty of illustrations over the years, but the two visual forms we’re most known for are covers and cartoons. With cartoons, nine times out of 10 you need to read a caption, which would slow the matter down. Here, the covers are instantly visual, and if they work, instantly legible. They go off like a grenade. Well, congrats on a fun way to celebrate 100 years. I hope people enjoy it. And when they’ve finished enjoying it, I hope they do the thing—which is subscribe to the magazine. CREDITS Client: The New Yorker Agency: Le Truc Production: PXP Studios, US Animation: Roof Music: Human Audio Post: Post Human

The New Yorker marks 100 years with a colorful trip through nearly 700 covers

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