A creative risk

Today's Applause cover may appear to some to be blank or missing something. I'm happy to be typing the words: This is not a mistake. The cover is designed this way intentionally to mimic the Beatles White Album. Our accompanying cover story inside Applause is about Ed Turner and Number 9 band, which is performing the music from The White Album in a concert at the Imperial Theater on Friday and Saturday night. The cover art is a visual play off the original album cover that we think Beatles fans will love. But as the Applause section rolled of the press yesterday afternoon, some cautious Production and Pressroom employees came upstairs to the Newsroom to ask "Is it supposed to look like this?" We never want to confuse our readers - life is confusing enough. But this creative and clever idea by our Features Editor Tharon Giddens and entertainment writer Steven Uhles was worth taking a chance on. Graphic artist Nate Owens did the design.

The name of the 1968 album is actually The Beatles. It is referred to as The White Album because it has no text other than the band's name (and on some early releases a serial number) on its plain white sleeve, which was designed by a pop artist Richard Hamilton. There are actually several different versions of The White Album cover, and there have been dozens of parodies by other musicians: http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/the-beatles-the-white-album-parodies/.