Bloomberg Businessweek cover is subversive genius

John Brownlee of Fast Company examines the thinking behind Bloomberg Businessweek‘s last cover of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Brownlee writes, “This isn’t the first Businessweek cover that has made Tim Cook look like an idiot. Just last year, Businessweek put Cook on the cover with the tagline ‘What Us Worry?’, drawing a parallel between the Apple CEO and Mad Magazine‘s gap-toothed buffoon of a mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.

“I asked Businessweek Creative Director Robert Vargas if the intention was to send a message to readers about Tim Cook’s credentials (or lack thereof) by choosing these specific colors and typeface for the cover. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Vargas stuck with Bloomberg’s official story that the only intent was make Tim Cook look like a happy, fun-loving CEO.

“‘We were really happy with the spirit of the cover photo, and how it’s the antithesis of the formality and seriousness you might expect from a portrait of a powerful CEO,’ Vargas told me in an email. ‘We found and experimented with the font Learning Curve’– we thought the playfulness of it made a great match and enhanced the surprise.’

“So maybe it was unintentionally genius. Businessweek has had its share of horrible covers over the years, but in this case, horrible is good.”

Read more here.