Harvard Lampoon: People (parody)

Research in Progress

Cover page: On a coral colored background, the design features a three-quarter length photograph on the right of a young woman [the actress Brooke Shields], whose outstretched right arm is holding a metal hook from which a dead fish is suspended by its open mouth. The woman has long, curly hair and is smiling with her lips closed; she wears a white, lacy, high-necked long-sleeved dress, gathered on a waistband. Her left arm is bent at the elbow and extends toward the fish. In the lower right hand corner, five lines of sans-serif type are superimposed on the dress: Big dead fish/ He loves life in the sea, /but now he's hooked on/ Brooke/ Shields. Lines one, four and five are imprinted in black-outlined yellow (lines four and five are larger than one); lines two and three are imprinted in black. The magazine title, People, in black-outlined white type, is labeled parody, superimposed on the last three letters in small, black, lowercase type. A color head shot immediately to the left, its right edge overlaid by the capital P, features a woman, her head turned to the left, wearing a blue open-necked shirt and beige safari hat. Near the top of the page, a narrow band stretched across and underneath the head shot is imprinted in red Bo Derek goes for a walk. Five additional lines of white type are imprinted in the space remaining between the left edge of the page and the left edge of the head shot. In the upper right-hand corner, a black triangle is imprinted on the diagonal in white A/ Harvard/ Lampoon/ Parody.

The magazine's one hundred-plus pages consist of articles and accompanying black and white photographs, parodies of both form and content of the authentic People magazine; legitimate color advertisements are interspersed.