Magazine Spotlight – Reader’s Digest

Cover Illustration by Serge Bloch

[This post is part of a series by this week’s Guest Editor Robert Newman. More info here.]

Reader’s Digest is a monthly magazine with a long and rich tradition of illustration. For many years the magazine was almost completely illustrated, featuring wrap around art on the cover and an extensive collection of artwork on the inside. In the 1990s, Reader’s Digest added photograph, but the legacy of illustration and cartoons is still very strong in the current iteration of the magazine.

Design director Dean Abatemarco and art director Marti Golon (assisted by associate art director Lauren Stine) use a heavy dose of illustration each issue, with subjects ranging from the personal and heartwarming to light and funny. Humor is a big component of the magazine, so in addition to the many cartoons (Reader’s Digest remains, along with The New Yorker, one of the few remaining general interest magazines to run regular cartoons in every issue), there are lots of fun and funny illustrations. The styles are diverse and original, range in size from full pages to potent little spots, and the magazine uses both established artists and talented newcomers.

The April 2014 issue featured on today’s post has a wonderful cover illustration by Serge Bloch. There’s an enhanced and animated version on the magazine’s iPad edition (Reader’s Digest does frequent illustrative animation on their digital issues). This issue is a great example of the bright, energetic, engaging artwork that appears in Reader’s Digest and make it one of the best showcases for magazine illustration.

Take a look at vintage Reader’s Digest cover and interior illustrations here.