Cover Story

How we chose this week’s image

Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief

This week’s issue is a first. Ever since 1986 we have produced an annual guide to the year ahead. Never before have we published it as a 90-page supplement in the weekly print edition. Our aim was to bring our future-gazing coverage to new readers.

The World Ahead 2024 assesses a year in which for the first time in history more than half the people on the planet will be living in countries that are holding national elections. It also assesses conflict and disorder in an increasingly fragmented world, climate change, artificial intelligence and rollercoaster markets.

Overshadowing everything, however, is Donald Trump. To an extent that none of us can remember, America’s presidential election in 2024 will determine which way the world turns. That is the subject of our cover editorial.

The question for our cover designers was, what should be our focus: the supplement or the editorial?

Here is the cover for The World Ahead. By tradition, it brings together the annual’s main themes. You can see rockets and satellites; brains and AI; trade and forex; renewable energy, hurricanes and wildfires; as well as Volodymyr Zelensky and Xi Jinping.

It does its job by telling you that the supplement is packed with insights. Like a smorgasbord, it contains something for everyone.

But we hope that readers of The Economist already know that we write about the entire world. They expect the cover to illustrate the week’s focus. And that led us towards Mr Trump.

A peeved ex-president is sitting on a planetary space-hopper as if he were waiting for power to fall back into his lap. But that isn’t right. Although several polls have him ahead of President Joe Biden in swing states, this is still a coin-toss election. In the next 12 months a stumble by either candidate could determine the outcome of the race, and thus the fate of the world.

Better to gesture to the idea of Mr Trump, rather than to the former president himself. The man in a MAGA hat is one way of doing it. Satisfyingly, you know precisely who it is even from behind.

We liked this. The trouble is that our chunky supplement has been completely forgotten.

The Romans thought of the new year as an entrance—the god of doorways, Janus, lends his name to the first month. Here is Mr Trump casting his shadow forward. This is a dangerous moment for such a man to be at the threshold of the Oval Office. If he wins back power despite his refusal to accept that Mr Biden beat him fairly in 2020, Mr Trump would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea.

This design hinted at The World Ahead, but so obliquely that most readers would be none the wiser.

We have flipped the emphasis. The year screams from the cover and Mr Trump is concealed in the date. What’s more, the curve of the figure 2 has him leaning forward, as if he would burst out of the blocks—quite a contrast to his slow start in 2016.

And that is indeed our sense of a second Trump term. Because MAGA Republicans have been planning his return for months, Trump Two would be more organised than Trump One was. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of economic protectionism, dealmaking and retribution.

For all its ingenuity, however, this was a bit flat. We wanted some drama.

The orange meteorite hurtling towards Earth was getting close. It is dramatic. By combining Mr Trump and the world, it unites our cover leader and the supplement that backs it.

But this was stronger. Whereas the meteorite is slightly ridiculous, the eclipse engulfing the surface of Earth is chilling. It captures our sense that a second Trump term would darken the world in a way that the first did not. Victory would confirm the former president’s most destructive instincts. His plans would encounter less resistance. And, because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline.

All that remained was to tweak the words. We had no reason to think that our readers would recognise the World Ahead supplement from its title alone—if only because we changed it two years ago from The World In. So we added a subheadline so that nobody could be in any doubt.

Our message is clear: 2024 is going to be tense.