Chris Ware an American cartoonist and illustrator, mostly know for his graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) and Building Stories (2012) was asked to make the cover of this edition of magazine The New Yorker. Here’s what he said:

Cover Story: Moving Images

“The New Yorker is arguably the primary venue for complex contemporary fiction around, so I often wonder why the cover shouldn’t, at least every once in a while, also give it the old college try? In the past, the editors have generously let me test the patience of the magazine’s readership with experiments in narrative elongation: multiple simultaneous covers, foldouts, and connected comic strips within the issue. This week’s cover, Mirror, a collaboration between The New Yorker and the radio program This American Life, tries something similar.”

The animation is a collaboration with John Kuramoto who works with cartoonists and graphic novelists under the name Phoobis.

“Earlier in the year, I asked Ira Glass if he had any audio that might somehow be adapted, not only as a cover but also as an animation that could extend the space and especially the emotion of the usual New Yorker image. I knew that Ira was the right person to go to with this experiment in storytelling form, because he’s probably one of the few people alive making a living with a semiotics degree.”

You can see the animated cover as well as the whole article here: www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-2015-12-07