It takes an art director to make a classic. Bob Ciano was art directing Opera News for three-and-a-half years in the late 1960s and made its covers a showcase for great illustration*. Published for members of the Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York, the magazine cost just 35 cents, but its covers were worth a million bucks. Ciano was the conductor of an ensemble of superb illustrators, including Stanislaw Zagorski and Milton Glaser, whose artworks were preludes to the choruses of articles inside. Ciano talks a bit about this early stage of his long and illustrious career on the Long Live Print / Print Is Dead podcast.
*Thanks to Mirko Ilic.