Thirty years of covers represent in a small way the chapter headings of our history, how we became who we are. It started out well, of course. Marilyn Monroe was our cover girl on that first undated issue of late 1953. The Rabbit followed quickly--premiering in the second issue, in fact. Hef conceived of the Rabbit as a means of personalizing Playboy. He avoided a human symbol--partly because of Esquire's Esky and The New Yorker's Eustace Tilley. Instead, he chose a formally attired Rabbit as an image of sophisticated sex that was, at the same time, self-satirical. When Art Director Art Paul drew the Rabbit emblem, it didn't occur to him that he was designing what was to become the second-most-recognized symbol in the world (the first is the Coca-Cola logo). "I probably spent all of half an hour on it," Paul remembers. But by 1959, a letter mailed from New York with only the Rabbit Head emblem on the envelope was promptly delivered to Playboy in Chicago. Since then, the Rabbit Head has figured in some way in the design of every Playboy cover--whether as an obvious design feature or a subtle configuration of a telephone cord or a strategic wrinkle in a bed sheet. We even contorted Playmate Donna Michelle into a human Rabbit Head. Although Playboy's covers maintain a certain consistency of attitude, our graphic and pictorial styles mirror the cultural weather around us. As you look at the covers on these pages--and the pictures that describe what went on during some of the shootings--you'll notice, we think, what we have all survived: the sexual silliness of the Fifties, the several liberations of the Sixties, the giddy glamor and self-absorption of the Seventies and the more engaging challenges of the early Eighties. Remember with us, then, 30 years of sights for sore eyes, always the best reason to visit a newsstand.
