We've been looking a lot at magazine design lately, and we thought it was about time to share a few of our thoughts on the subject with a few posts.

Here's one of the sneakiest forms of advertising I have seen in a while. Advertisers commonly pay a high price to get on the second page, and even more for the back cover... But there's one place that's always been the haven of no advertising - the front cover. Until now.

We found this ad in (on) Vice Magazine the other day while browsing around, and as it's not a UK magazine, we weren't too fast on the uptake. However, the ingenious creativity behind the idea can't be ignored - the ad for BMW overlays the standard front cover with glow in the dark paint. To anyone buying the magazine, and for 90% of reading time, the cover looks like a standard cover, yet when the lights go down, your eyes are drawn to the subtle glow in the dark image of an iconic BMW 1 Series.

Even more subtle is the placement of typography. The "1" of "1 Series" is positioned exactly where the "I" in "Vice" is. That's planning for you. Ensuring both the creative teams, copywriters, advertising agency, and printers are on the same page is not an easy feat of team management.

Despite the gradual decline in the print industry, everyone still likes to own a magazine or two, and the continued emergence of unique and smart ideas for the medium is reassuring.