Last Thursday, visual culture and design magazine Print triumphed over the likes of Metropolis and Aperture to win the National Magazine Award for general excellence in the under 100,000 circulation category. On the occasion of the bimonthly magazine's tenth nomination and its fourth win, the American Society of Magazine Editors lauded Print's "expansive view of its subject, its relentless curiosity, and its determination to look at design not in a vacuum but as a crucial gateway to popular culture, the environment, even politics."

How did the Print team celebrate its win? "After the show was over at Jazz at Lincoln Center, we collapsed at the bar next door at the Mandarin Oriental," says editor-in-chief Joyce Rutter Kaye (pictured above, with outgoing ASME president Cindi Leive), who adds that there was much giggling at the sight of associate editor James Gaddy's onscreen appearance during the awards show. "He was the cover model for our March/April 2007 New Visual Artists issue, which was projected about two stories tall in a spinning graphic," adds Kaye.

As for the spiderlike award itself, it has already had some adventures of its own. After joining Kaye in a cab ride home to Brooklyn last Thursday, Print's Ellie traveled by tote bag to Park Slope's PS 321, "where it journeyed through the halls and rested beneath a third-grade desk during 'Parents as Learning Partners' time, going completely unnoticed despite the high concentration of media-employed parents in the building," Kaye tells us. "It then took a Q train ride to the office where it happily joined our other three Ellies on top of our set of bookshelves." Now it's now back to business as usual at Print as the staff closes the August issue and judges the Regional Design annual. But the memories are still fresh. Adds Kaye, "I still have an unwashed champagne glass sitting on my desk from the pre-Ellie celebration in the office Thursday night."

"It begins with a bite, a painless bite." So starts "Bedlam in the Blood," the July 2007 National Geographic cover story about malaria that won the 120-year-old magazine a 2008 National Magazine Award for photojournalism. The online story includes illuminating field notes from photographer John Stanmeyer and writer Michael Finkel, but how does a feature like this come about and come together? We asked National Geographic editor-in-chief Chris Johns:

This story is one that I wanted to do quite badly. I've had malaria. Twice. The second time quite seriously. I'd run into Patty Stonesifer at the Gates Foundation [where she has served as chief executive officer since 1997], and a story like that requires a period of percolation. You've really got to think creatively: How are we going to tell this story and make it fascinating and interesting? So it's not a lecture, it's a real story about real people and a real problem, but a problem that does definitely have a solution.

....From the outset, the team starts to talk about how they can tell this story in a way that will be incredibly exciting to readers. Then they will work in concert on mapping, on information graphics, on photographic coverage, knowing that there are some parts of the story that will make extremely strong passages of text but may not make such strong pictures and vice-versa, some of the pictures may be incredibly powerful yet might not be as inclined to have that power with the written word.

For its fifth annual issue featuring the world's 100 Most Influential People, Time recruited 4% as many influential graphic designers and design firms to take a crack at the cover: Chip Kidd, James Victore, Neville Brody, and Euro RSCG. Pictured above are the five finalist covers (one designer has two entries). Can you guess whose cover is whose? And which was chosen as the ultimate winner? Make your guesses and then click "continued..." below for all of the answers and links to larger photos of each cover.

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Our sister blog FishbowlNY twittered the night away at the National Magazine Awards ceremony (a final, koan-like post found them at the afterparty "standing alone at the cheese bar"), and we're pleased to report that UnBeige favorite Print magazine won the Ellie award for general excellence in the under 100,000 circulation category, joining more widely circulated general excellence winners National Geographic, The New Yorker, GQ, Backpacker, and Mother Jones. Meanwhile, Wired triumphed over a slate of nominees that included last year's winner, New York magazine, to take home the award for design. Below, we've highlighted in yellow the winners among the design and photo category nominees. The full list of winners is after the jump.

DESIGN: Good | GQ | New York Magazine* | T, The New York Times Style Magazine | Vanity Fair | Wired

PHOTOGRAPHY: Gourmet | GQ | Martha Stewart Living | National Geographic | New York Magazine | W

PHOTOJOURNALISM: Aperture | Mother Jones | National Geographic | The New Yorker | The Virginia Quarterly Review

PHOTO PORTFOLIO: New York Magazine | Newsweek | T, The New York Times Style Magazine (two nominations) | Vanity Fair

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Verena is not exactly a new magazine, since it's been available in Europe for eons. But what makes the American launch unique is that it's now in English. What's more, there are lots of explanations, pictures, etc. that make it friendly to Americans who want to get the hippest, latest knitted looks without spending a ton of U.S. dollars to do it. Former Vogue Knitting editor Valerie Kurita does all this and more through her love of languages. "Today, having been in the knitting biz for a long time, I've gotten to the point where I can "knit-speak" in French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, English (you may or may not know that English knitting instructions have to be Americanized), and Swedish. I wouldn't be able to help you find a pastry shop or a bathroom in some of these languages, but if you need help figuring out a cable twist in Swedish, I'm your girl," she says in her blog. For those of you attempting a sweater with instructions in French, contact Kurita now. You can either order Verena online or dash out to your local knitting store to see if they have it in stock.

Last Friday, New York's Museum of Modern Art opened its exhibition of Esquire covers designed by George Lois. On view through March of next year, the show features 32 of the 92 covers Lois created for Esquire from 1962 to 1972. "I have always seen myself as an artist. And this is the Museum of Modern Art. And I am an artist," said Lois in an interview with the Associated Press.

And Lois has had some experience dealing with artists whose work adorns the walls of MoMA. In Charles McGrath's piece on Lois and the exhibition in yesterday's New York Times, the writer discusses the remarkable ability of Lois' typically text-free Esquire covers to convey a single idea through an image. "Some were untouched photographs, but, in an era before Photoshop, some were created by the primitive technique of cutting and pasting, using photographs, clip art, and sometimes hand-drawn elements," writes McGrath, before extracting from Lois this gem of an anecdote about Esquire's May 1969 cover (pictured above), which featured Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's tomato soup.

"I remember when we were doing the Warhol cover," Mr. Lois recalled. "I explained to Andy what I had in mind, and he said, 'Oh, will you have to build a very big can?'"

The April 28 issue of New York magazine may have the stars of Gossip Girl on its cover, but the feature well starts off on another foot, with editor-at-large Adam Sternbergh's nimble article on feet ("You Walk Wrong"). Critical to encouraging readers to hunker down for a 5,000-word romp through podiatry research, walking classes, and no fewer than two quotations by Transcendalists are the trompe l'oeil shoes (like the pseudo-Adidas pictured above) scattered throughout the story in photographs by Tom Schierlitz. Creating a classic wingtip, a Christian Louboutin stiletto (watch out, he recently won a legal battle to trademark that red sole), and the above soccer shoe out of makeup on bare feet were Temptu body artists John Maurad and Jenai Chin. And if their feat wasn't enough to pique your interest in reading the article, try this snippet, which is the best sentence we've read in a while:

Galahad Clark never intended to get into the shoe business, let alone the anti-shoe business. And he likely never would have, if it weren't for the Wu-Tang Clan.

This writer's fiancee often rants against 'green issues' of magazines, saying how counterintuitive the whole thing is and how a real 'green issue' would be published solely as a PDF or entirely online. But that, of course, uses a certain amount of rationality, logic and a careless disregard for how the magazine business works. However, she can now count among her allies one Mr. Larry Dobrow whose piece in AdAge, "How Dobrow Celebrated Earth Day (Hint: Hefting a Small Forest)," he picks apart Vanity Fair's recent 'green issue' from cover to cover and is absurdly funny along the entire route. However, at the piece's close, he does stop to offer a couple of positive words, such as:

Meanwhile, kudos to the handful of advertisers -- Lexus, Fiji Water, Kendall-Jackson winery, ABC Carpet & Home, BMW, GE, Chevrolet and Mini -- whose ads echo the green theme. Granted, they'd probably have run in VF if the May issue were pro-seal-clubbing or anti-lettuce, but it's still heartening to know that their media minions were mindful of coming across as responsible, attentive earth denizens.

Colors, the lush quarterly published in three bilingual editions by Fabrica (the communications research center of Benetton), recently launched its money-themed winter issue in San Francisco, where the Italy-based magazine has teamed up with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Academy of Art University San Francisco to celebrate its 17-year publishing history. Last Thursday's presentation by the Colors editorial and creative directors at the Academy's 79 Gallery was so packed that we hear a trio of Dwell magazine staffers (chair lovers if ever there were) took in the lecture while sitting on the floor. The gallery was decked out with a giant podium made of flattened copies of the new issue (pictured above) and photographs from it. Meanwhile, the Italian Cultural Institute is hosting an exhibition of all 73 Colors covers through May 17.

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As this writer attempts to pull a Jay-Z/Obama move this week by brushing off the "eh, big deal" loss by the candidate in Pennsylvania, we found some comfort over at Folio, with their piece, "How Magazines Treat Obama." Working off a line from Newsweek editor Jon Meacham about our not just picking candidates but their stories as well (both true and fabricated, if there's anything even remotely separating the two at this point or in any political contest), Folio went out to collect all the magazine covers Obama has graced, to take a look at how that medium was selling him. Turns out, it's all been pretty terrific, largely because he creates a good story from any angle. Here's a bit:

Meacham may be stating the obvious here, but it underlines one of the reasons the media seems to be so fascinated with the presidential candidate and all the different ways magazines portray him: the contender, the new hope, the impassioned speaker, the suave sartorialist, the debonair intellectual, the family man, the fresh alternative -- even, as Tiger Beat reported, the senator who sings in the shower.

It isn't a long piece, beyond the image and most of what we just pulled out above. But there are some great related links worth checking out and, if anything, it's interesting to see the full-size image of all the cover captures.