Old Dragon Magazine Covers

[tleilaxu]

Remember the old covers, where it just said Dragon in the upper left hand corner and every issue had a cool painting for the cover?

These days the covers look the YM with all the over-busy writing. Replace that picture of the orc with a 16 year old girl and "Getting the most out of your bard" with "20 ways to know if he is the one" and tada!

Plus, most covers are just cartoon style drawings, which is ok every once in a while, but I really liked those lush covers from days of yore (back before I even played DND and I stole my step-brothers old dragon issues)

*sigh*

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

For someone who whines about art and the cost it adds to gamebooks I miss the old Dragon covers. There was some amazing art done and the clean style of the cover was great. Now it's a cluttered mess that is barely distingishable from Home and Garden.


Anyone here have the Dragon CD-Rom? Does it have the covers in a nice printable format?

 

[Warduke]

There was also a difference between the US covers and the UK ones. The US ones had that uncluttered art while the UK ones had huge borders with text on them. So I guess us europeans are used to it.

 

[Geoffrey]

The new covers are indeed terrible. Supposedly, the loud covers make the magazine more noticeable. Ironically, they make Dragon less noticeable since now it looks like all the other magazines.

 

[BOZ]

flexor, i have it but i honestly haven't tried printing any covers. of course, lack of access to a color printer doesn't help...

 

[tleilaxu]

any chance dragon will ever do a "retro" issue?

 

[darkbard]

i quite like the art of the new covers [but then again i am also into the "cutting edge" gritty and fantastic art of 3e in general]. however, it is awful hard to see it past all that clutter of headlines. and oftentimes the sensationalist "sound bite" approach of dragon's and dungeon's headlines is mildly offensive in its "grab-the-attention-of-the-unsophisticated" tact.

 

[Thresher]

From most of the 3E artwork, I cant say I like it a lot of it, actually, some of it is quite horrible.
I much preferred the styles of Jeff Easley, Brom and Fred Fields back in most of the 2E stuff.

But I guess everyone has a price and from what I gather 3E is on a bit of a lower budget, from what I understand TSR used to chuck a lot of money at AD&D which is sort of why they ended up where they are now.

 

[KenM]

For someone who whines about art and the cost it adds to gamebooks I miss the old Dragon covers. There was some amazing art done and the clean style of the cover was great. Now it's a cluttered mess that is barely distingishable from Home and Garden.


Anyone here have the Dragon CD-Rom? Does it have the covers in a nice printable format?

Yes I have the Dragon CD-rom. VERY good value. You can print ANY page from any of the issues, this includes front/ back covers, they appear excatly as they were printed. But I have not tryed to print any covers, either. But I know you can.

 

[mattcolville]

I am 100% certain the covers look the way they do because the folks who publish Dragon have professional designers who say "THIS is how a magazine cover has to look."

To which I say "That's too bad, 'cause it looks crappy."