Cover Trail

How the cover gets made

① “The cover is about United wanting to become a better airline, and how it plans to do that.”

“That’s simple—cheaper tickets, more

legroom, glitch-free check-ins, on-time flights, courteous employees, and unlimited booze on every flight.”

“They’re improving the coffee.”

“Baby steps. For the cover, how about an airline safety card, but instead of emergency instructions, it’s some of the terrible things that have happened at

the company?”

“An airline safety card seems a little

expected to me, completely unoriginal even. It’s like a first idea you throw out there and then work on improving. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it

done in other magazines—many, many other magazines—for about as

long as I’ve been looking at them.”

“I’ll work up something else.”

② “A man vomiting into an airline

vomit bag.”

“We just did a burrito vomiting.”

“Right. But that was a food item vomiting. This is a human vomiting.

We’re taking the essence of the burrito vomiting idea and applying it in a way that breathes new life into it, while at the same time creating a visual dialogue between the two very distinct vomiting executions.”

“Let’s do the airline safety card.”