The cover design for this issue of Stand evolved from a project Elaine Glover and I started a couple of years ago. As we looked back at some of the bespoke livery Stand has sported, we decided to redeploy some of the more striking elements – of these earlier covers – for a new generation of readers.  

We wanted to explore designs which made the name of the magazine one of the central components of its cover art; in particular, we hoped to evoke a similar feel to Ron Swift’s geometric designs for Stand throughout the 1960s and ’70s. The incorporation of the word ‘Stand’ as a subtle – or obvious – feature of his designs is a hugely enjoyable feature of his work, and as a result his covers are undoubtedly striking and memorable. In this sense, Swift’s cover for the January 1966 Stand is perhaps one of his most iconic designs: not only does it showcase a typographical focus on ‘Stand’ itself, but it bears an entirely unique type design, central to the entire cover.*

One of the results of these reflections is the abstract and angular arrangement that greeted you when you picked up Stand 18(1). The cover as it appears today remains largely unchanged from the sketch I showed Elaine in the Stand office last May, save for an adjustment she suggested to one of the bars… ‘You’re not going to leave it vertical, are you?’

The bars and circles are perhaps Kandinsky-esque on the surface, but the emphasis they channel toward ‘Stand’ itself – while framing the names of some of the issue’s contributors – is a characteristic boasted by some of Swift’s most enduring covers.


* Readers may note that this cover was reinvented for Stand 16(2) in 2018, and again for 2019’s 17(2).