Yes, we know those covers and spreads look so professional over breakfast on Thursday mornings. However, there’s a bit of last-minute finagling every week to get the perfect visuals for our humble mag. Behold, the top five objects that have saved FM this past year.
1. Handcuffs and a whip—These seemed like obvious objects for our October 28 scrutiny on SM. Too bad none of us would own up to owning them in our daily lives. After many desperate emails to The Crimson listserv, Evan R. Johnson finally tracked some down. Perhaps from his bedroom. We didn’t ask.
2. “Moonboots”—For our December 2 scrutiny on Style, we knew we had to have a picture of the fad-tastic puffy Moonboots we’d seen adorning feet all over the Yard. However, we must come clean and admit that the “Moonboots” in our magazine were actually not genuine, veritable Moonboot brand, but Veronique’s “Snowboots” she bought in Paris. When she was 12.
3. Bubble Gum—It was 1 a.m. We had thousands of perfectly crafted words written by William A. Adams ’04-’05 for our April 8 scrutiny on rejection—and not a single picture seemed to work. The proverbial lightbulb hit around 2 a.m., and we headed to Tommy’s Value for packs of Bubble Yum to complement our “When the Bubble Bursts” headline. It was a fight to the death for the next 45 minutes, as Mollie and Kristi fought for the biggest bubble. In the end, it was Kristi who won out. Her jaw is still sore.
4. Grapes, Orange slices, a watermelon, and a Fried Egg—All four of these simple delicacies graced our cover for the March 4 “Food” issue. It’s not easy getting grapes to look like an “F.”
5. Scissors—There was a lot of ideas circling our November 4 cover article about efforts to destroy the final club system. Finally we settled on the concept of “cutting” final clubs out of the picture, with some careful designing by Caitlin and Aleris to make it actually look like there were scissors cutting into the cover. We were happy with the result, and we’ll never look at a simple pair of scissors the same way again.
