Last week on ABC’s Nightline, Bill Weir, the host of the segment “This Could Be Big,” waved our October issue on national television. The segment was on QR codes, and our cover had a big one on it. Weir’s question was, “Will this get bigger, or will it end up on the dust heap of technology?”

Our technology issue was all about how digital tools are shaking up the design profession, from architects learning code to using software for participatory design. Putting a QR code on each of those stories was a no-brainer—they add a multimedia layer of information to the page.  But the QR code on our cover was really the masterstroke—it’s a portal to Metropolis’s first digital cover.  When our art director Dungjai Pungauthaikan called the designer Peter Alfano to create the content that lies beneath that huge pixelated box, she said “Peter, this is the cover you’ve been waiting for.” We will say no more, except that once you’ve watched Weir’s segment below, we suggest you get hold of our October issue, and use a smartphone on it. (Or click here)

The “boxes of squiggly lines” are not quite as easy as they are made out to be, as our art department discovered in implementing them. They had to take into account various video formats, incompatible web browsers, and different smartphones. But they stuck it out. Because until Weir’s fancy trick with the champagne bottle becomes generally available, the QR code is very far from the dust heap—it is still our easiest link from the printed word to the digital world.

Read our technology issue here, including the story about QR codes integrated into clothing.

The final July/August cover (left) and an alternate version featuring the Four Seasons

For this month’s cover it was New York vs. Alabama, suits vs. students. Both directions were valid. Each had a pedigree backed by a design legend—Philip Johnson at the Four Seasons, Samuel Mockbee at Auburn University’s Rural Studio. The deciding factor? There were other magazines that could feature the Four Seasons, but only Metropolis could take the Rural Studio’s $20,000 house and put it on the cover. I wonder how many dinners on 52nd Street $20K buys.

The final June cover (left) and an alternate version. Illustration: Aesthetic Apparatus

“It took the editors around here a couple of tries to get used to saying their name without giggling,” says Metropolis’s creative director, Criswell Lappin, of Aesthetic Apparatus, the Minneapolis-based firm that illustrated this month’s cover. “By then we had found one of their concepts particularly com­pel­ling: the idea that the future of green building (in this case, the new headquarters of the U.S. Green Building Council, in Washington, D.C.) would involve utiliz­ing existing structures. We just needed to deter­mine whe­ther it should be type- or image-driven. After Michael Byzewski put in a tad more quality time, we went with this image—a generic-looking concrete structure—but not before pumping up the type a bit.”

For our May cover we approached Brian Collins to create a conceptual illustration for the winning Next Generation project. He and his talented team—John Fullbrook III, Timothy Goodman, and Jason Nuttal—passed along a handful of smart directions, but the pinwheel/pylon juxtaposition really piqued our interest. That concept turned out to be the one John felt the strongest about as well, and he was excited about developing it further. The final cover—fun, bold, and hopeful—clearly reflects our winner’s idea. And be on the loookout for pinwheels; they’re likely to pop up in the oddest places…

Left: an alternate version of the May cover; click to view a larger image.

In thinking about the April cover, the famous Philip Johnson expression, “galloping off in all directions” comes to mind. We explored ideas for three of the six features, and even considered turning a front-of-the-book story on Muji into a feature (during production, no less) because the image worked so well as a potential cover. Alas, the editorial timing of that story was not ideal, so we decided against it. Then we channeled a little George Lois and came up with conceptual directions for the bathroom story and pitted them against a new restaurant in Midtown and a hotel on the outskirts of London. In the end, the idea of redefining luxury seemed the most provocative, considering the current economic climate. Read more…

She’d been a designer at Rolling Stone for fifteen years, she knew how to make something stand out in Times Square, and she received the AIGA medal last year. Why not ask her to design the March cover? Well, not only did we get to collaborate with Gail Anderson, but I think most of the SpotCo design team came with her. From pencil sketches to final compositions, Gail, Amanda Spielman, and Jeff Rogers kept a steady line of communication open, responding directly to our questions and requests with each iteration. Near the end of the process, we had our pick of three excellent directions. But what everyone (and I mean everyone - a rare event) loved about the final cover was how you understood everything about the issue just by looking at it.

Maybe we should have an intern who just works on education metaphors, because we seem to need at least one a year. After two rounds with an outside designer who decided he wasn’t right for us, various holidays, and three days of full-tilt art-department energy, the dust finally settled, and we went with the clearest direction. The simplicity of a young student sitting at his desk resonated with us, especially when paired with the cover line, the font, and the nod to the primary tablet paper in the background. The absence of a classroom spoke to the potential for new ideas in the design of schools.

All the pieces were falling into place for January. We had two stellar photographers—Paúl Rivera and Peter Aaron—shooting Grimshaw’s EMPAC building. After some discussion, we chose a Rivera image of the performance hall, a kind of wooden egg nested in glass. The only problem: no people. But even that seemed all right once we learned he would be photographing the space one more time. We’d get our cover with people. On the day of the reshoot, I got an e-mail from Paúl asking if we had a backup plan. Attached was a digital scouting shot, but the interior was now adorned with Christmas decorations. So how did we resolve it? We performed a little holiday magic.

This month, the cover debate came down to the wire-not because we were having trouble finding something that worked but because we had two strong contenders. Internally we designed a straightforward direction-a building and a hybrid engine joined together-to represent the high-performance aspects of Stefan Behnisch’s structures. But in the end we went with Matthew Bouloutian’s bright illustration (above), which takes the same idea and adds a layer of process, a little Elliott Earls, and a dash of Takashi Murakami. Several editors described it as ‘hopeful,’ but the art department likened the decision to choosing between Metallica and Pizzicato Five.

See the runner-up cover after the jump. Read more…

Left: The November cover designed by Jeffrey Lai
Right: Alternate cover with photograph by Michael Wolf

As financial markets crashed and the future of our economy remained unclear, we decided not to make Michael Wolf’s photographs of the American office our cover. Though timely and powerful, his almost Hopperesque images didn’t evoke the inspiring and empowering message that we felt our readers needed during this time of uncertainty. But Eero Saarinen’s firm was our perfect cover story. His office spawned a revolution in thinking that continues to influence firms all over the world. Since Saarinen’s architectural education began at Yale, we felt it was appropriate to pass off this cover design to a fellow alumnus, Jeffrey Lai. He used a wonderful historical photo by Balthazar Korab showing Saarinen working on the TWA model with a very young Cesar Pelli and Sam Luderowski.