mea culpa: the February Cover

Pretty much everyone I've spoken to about the February issue has asked me the same question:


"What's the deal with the car?"
What's the deal, indeed. There's no explanatory title to be found and the blurred pink text found below seems to be in no way related to the picture of a driver-less Bentley parked in some grey-blue void.

To make matters even worse, you open the magazine, flip through a couple pages of posh-esque ads for V.S.O.P. cognac, flip past the colophone and letter from the managing editor to find the table of contents, and then you see this bit:

"COVER FEATURE --- Microfinance: Humble Dreams"
"Microfinancing?" you think to yourself, "What does that have to do with the picture of the luxury car?" Answer: precious, precious little, though to be honest it's much, much closer to: nothing at all.

This obvious flaw in the magazine's basic design (what goes on the cover is Media 101, right?) may seem to some like a darkly ironic comment on the economic status quo, though I can assure you that such an assessment would be giving way too much credit to the lone few responsible for the gem of an idea: "Hey... let's sell the cover to an advertiser! Yeah!" mere hours before the issue was set to be sent to the printers. But, in case you were wondering, this is not the "mea culpa" I came here to atone for in this post.

No. What we actually got wrong was simply forgetting to link the Bentley to the microfinancing article! Right? Ignoring the fact that there were some in the office with brains-not-made-of-water who fought to prevent the last-minute cover swap, our fault really lies in the fact that we just forgot to give the cover a headline to account for the contents inside the magazine! so that you, dear Reader, could look forward to the sheer reading joy waiting within! It was our to job give you sufficient enough reason to crack the cover, and we managed to blow it... but just this one time. I swear. We learn from our mistakes.

Like, here's what should have happened: OK. Management has made a decision: "This picture of a car is going to be the cover." Your first thought: "Wow, that idea is worse than sex with a wet bag of broken glass." But you're not the boss and the necessary next step is to make the best of an already weird situation and implement the decision that's been made.

OK. Time to brainstorm! Hmmm... A Car... and microfinancing... A Car?... and microfinancing... Hmmm... Solution?: