Charles Apple

Nor is he real damn fond of Outside magazine at the moment.

As far as we can reconstruct, here’s what happened…

1. Outside prepares a cover story on champion cyclist Lance Armstrong. They shoot him for the cover wearing a plain blue T-shirt.

2. At some point, the editors have a cute saying Photoshopped onto the shirt:

Amusing, perhaps. But not to Lance.

3. Lance tweets:

4. The whole thing goes viral — most notably at the Huffington Post.

5. Outside responds with a little tag beneath the cover image on its web site:

Funny stuff. And not to excuse this — because I, too, hate bullshit with Photoshop when it’s not obviously a photoillustration…

But come on, bicycle dude. This stuff is done all the time in magazines. That doesn’t make it right. But it is pretty common.

(Read about that Washingtonian example here.)

(Read about that example from Newsweek here.)

(Read about that one — and several more like it — here.)

My advice, Lance: Next time, opt to give your exclusive interview to a newspaper.

Thanks to Michael King of the Green Bay Press-Gazette for the tip.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Amusing stuff, Magazine design, Visual ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.