1. Early Magazine Covers:when magazines first started out most of them didn't really have covers, it was more like a table of contents. Eventually they had covers, but they were like book covers, plain and simple. The pictures on the cover were more for decoration as opposed to actually letting you know what's being talked about in the magazine.
2. The Poster Cover:When magazines started using poster covers, like early magazine covers, they really had nothing to do with the stories in the magazine. Instead, they were used basically to just make the magazine look nice and/or to convey a certain season or mood. There are also hardly ever any cover lines or themes announced on the front of these magazines, but if there are any they are most of the time very small. Most poster covers looked like "they were printed to be framed and hung on the wall."
3. Pictures Married to Type:On the magazine covers, pictures are married to type when the words and the picture are in "a symbiotic, mutually supportive relationship." Most of the time with this new design, words were in color and sometimes rather large depending on the style of the magazine. Basically, this is the cover where the words and the picture blend with each other and compliment one another as opposed to taking away from one or the other.
4. In the Forest of Words:During experimenting with text colors and sizes in the pictures married to type phase, magazine designers became to interested in the words, and not so much the picture. In the forest of words, its exactly that, a forest of words. There are so many words, its easy to get lost. Most of the time in these magazines the words overpower the picture, despite how powerful it may be, and really take away from it.