For the first time in its nearly 100-year history, Time magazine has changed its name on the front cover.
What does it say instead? VOTE.
With mere weeks to go until the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. the magazine’s new cover comes at a time when celebrities, publishers, and platforms are urging people to get to the voting booths or register for absentee ballots — however they can safely, just vote.
For the cover illustration, the magazine teamed up with street artist Shepard Fairey, whose ‘Hope’ poster became synonymous but unofficially linked with Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign (not to mention the copyright lawsuit that followed).
The new Time cover features a person wearing a bandana face mask emblazoned with a voting ballot box which is broadcasting a message to vote, even in these ongoing times of the coronavirus pandemic. “Even though the subject in the portrait knows there are additional challenges to democracy during a pandemic,” Fairey’s statement to the magazine reads, the person on the cover will use their “voice and power by voting.”
Fairey has worked on two other Time covers: a ‘Hope’-like portrait of Obama as 2008 Person of the Year and an Occupy Wall Street Protester in 2011.
“Few events will shape the world to come more than the result of the upcoming U.S. presidential election,” wrote Time editor-in-chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal in an accompanying post.
“To mark this historic moment, arguably as consequential a decision as any of us has ever made at the ballot box, we have for the first time in our nearly 100-year history replaced our logo on the cover of our U.S. edition with the imperative for all of us to exercise the right to vote.”
The issue includes a special report on the closing days of the 2020 campaign and a guide on how to vote safely.
Mashable’s got you covered too, with guides on getting the vote out safely, and how to avoid voter suppression here, here, and here.