Readers of Cromos magazine were surprised to see an illustration on the cover of their favorite magazine. “It had been years since we used an illustration on the cover,” says design director Dario Forero Aldana
This week edition of Cromos caught my eye because this general interest magazine, and a favorite with Colombians, normally carries photos on its cover.
Here was a dynamic illustration of two faces well known to Colombians: President Juan Manuel Santos, just re-elected to a second 4-year term and José Néstor Pekerman, the Argentinian coach of the Colombian national football team.
Both have been “re elected” for second terms, so Cromos asks the question: Which one of the two will have a better tenure?
The making of a Cromos cover
Other illustrations by Argentinean illustrator Gonzalo Rodriguez
Cromos' long time design director, Dario Forero Aldana (with whom I worked during my visit to Cromos), tells me that this cover happened “in the last minute, and was not the original plan.”
“It was not easy to get to this cover,” Dario writes me. “We called upon Argentinean illustrator Gonzalo Rodriguez four days before the closing of the edition and asked for an illustration that was intended for the inside pages of the magazine.”
At the same time, Dario's team commissioned a photographer to come up with an image including both of the two important characters for the cover story, the President and the football coach.
On Tuesday, on deadline to close the magazine, Dario says that he and his team put the photograph on the cover, but it did not quite do it. Upon showing the illustration to Cromos' editor in chief, Jairo Dueñas, he was “fascinated and the decision was made right there to go with a cover illustration.”
“Readers of Cromos loved the cover,” says Dario. “They were surprised, since it had been years since we used an illustration for the cover.”
For the record
First edition of Cromos Magazine 1916
A Cromos magazine cover of 1959; assorted covers show how the logo of the Colombian magazine has evolved.
Edition of CROMOS after Garcia Media redesign of 1993
Cromos magazine turned 98 years in January. In 2016, it will become the first Latin American magazine to turn 100 years of uninterrupted publication.