Just As You Were Putting the Finishing Touches On That St. Patty’s Day Issue

Even if your publication is planning an oh-so-trendy “green” issue, it would probably be wise to veer far, far away from anything even remotely aqua. As Julia Turner uncovers on Slate, a green magazine means certain doom:

This belief may sound cockamamie, but it’s pervasive and often firmly held, especially at women’s magazines. Cindi Leive, now the editor in chief of Glamour, remembers getting into “an almost physical fight” at Self over a cover that pictured Stephanie Seymour in a dark green sweater. “I liked the cover,” Leive recalled. “But my art director…not only was she screaming, she was screaming in a thick and impassioned Finnish accent and telling me that dark green was the color of death…in Scandinavian mythology, but also on the newsstand.” The end result? Seymour appeared on the cover in a creamy white fisherman’s sweater.

Whoa. But this has to be the best part of the whole article:

Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, put forth a more plausible theory: “Like brown, [green] can be tricky to control on press and either one can migrate in the baby poop direction if the printer isn’t careful. It’s a technical consideration, but it may explain an industry-wide allergy to the color.”

So, as Turner does, we raise our glass (pipes) to High Times, the only magazine that’s not afraid to smear baby poop across their covers, month after month.

Via TMN.

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