Issue #1 / art by Butcher Billy
(April 2019)
Cover to Cover
The Art of Luckbox
The Luckbox editorial mission was clear long before the first magazines rolled off the presses in the spring of 2019. We would gather and analyze data-driven, financial markets information and then serve up actionable insight for active investors. Plus, we’d wrap it all up in an entertaining package.
But that would require images as well as words. From the outset, we were determined to use our covers to showcase illustrators from around the world. So, we drew upon the collective creativity of our art directors and a number of freelance designers. They gave birth to stunning covers and notable page layouts with some of the magazine industry’s most colorful, exciting and entertaining illustrations and graphics.
Jacqueline Cantu became the magazine’s first creative director and set the tone for our first 20 issues. Besides designing all of the inside pages, she created eight covers during her tenure.
From there, Katherine Bryja and Tim Hussey worked together on page design for the next 11 editions of the magazine. After that, Hussey teamed up with Gail Snable to lay out the next 10 editions. Hussey was sometimes credited as AptCDesign, so you won’t see his name in every magazine.
Cover: Issue #1 featured a portrait of legendary options trader and fintech pioneer Tom Sosnoff, by Butcher Billy.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Ed McKinley
MANAGING EDITORS
Yesenia Duran
Kendall Polidori
James Melton
Mike Reddy
Nav Dhillon
Elizabeth Schiele
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Garrett Baldwin
TECHNICAL EDITORS
Nick Battista
James Blakeway Kai Zeng
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Vonetta Logan, Tom Preston, Mike Rechenthin
CREATIVE DIRECTORS
AptCDesign + Gail Snable (2022-24)
Tim Hussey + Katherine Bryja (2021-22)
Jacqueline Cantu (2019-21)
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Garrett Roodbergen
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jeff Joseph
COMMENTS, TIPS & STORY IDEAS
Feedback@Luckboxmagazine.com
CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES
PRESS RELEASES & EDITORIAL INQUIRIES Editor@Luckboxmagazine.com
ADVERTISING INQUIRIES
Advertise@Luckboxmagazine.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS & SERVICE Support@Luckboxmagazine.com
MEDIA & BUSINESS INQUIRIES
PUBLISHER: JEFF JOSEPH jj@Luckboxmagazine.com
Luckbox magazine, a tastylive publication, is published at 1330 W. Fulton St., Chicago, IL 60607
The cover of Issue #2 was unique among all Luckbox covers for not including something. Do you know what’s missing?
(ANSWER BELOW)
WINNER
Maggie Award for Best Special Themed Issue, 2019
This cover by Peter Horvath was inspired by the movie poster for Mel Brooks 1977 comedy classic, High Anxiety.
ANSWER: Issue #2 was the only issue of Luckbox that did not include a cherry somewhere on the cover.
Clockwise:
Issue #2 / art by Jacqueline Cantu (May 2019)
Issue #3/ art by Jacqueline Cantu (June 2019)
Issue #4/ art by Marv Watson (July 2019)
Issue #5/ art by Peter Horvath (Aug 2019)
Clockwise: Issue #7 / art by Lou Patrick Mackay (November 2019), Issue #8/ art by Jonathan Allardyce (December 2019), Issue #9/ art by Jacqueline Cantu (Jan/Feb 2020), Issue #10/ art by Brian Stauffer (March 2020)
This provocatively headlined cover appeared shortly after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
COVER TO COVER
Clockwise: Issue #11 / art by Jacqueline Cantu (April 2020), Issue #12/ art by Serge Seidlitz (May 2020), Issue #13/ art by Andrew R. Davis (June 2020), Issue #14/ art by Alex Trebus (July 2020)
WINNERFolioEddieAward forBestFullIssue of2020
Clockwise: Issue #15 / art by Jacqueline Cantu (Aug-Oct 2020), Issue #16/ art by Paul Lachine (November 2020), Issue #17/ art by Doug Chayka (Dec/Jan 2021), Issue #18/ art by Mojo Wang (Feb/March 2021)
Top to bottom: Issue #19 / art by Jaqueline Cantu (April 2021), Issue #20 / art by Jaqueline Cantu (May 2021)
Michelle Thompson
Cover to Cover
It’s no easy task to choose the best Luckbox magazine covers. But one measure of their success—the awards they helped win—would be a plausible way of judging their merit. The covers played a key role in bagging the 23 awards Luckbox has earned in its five years of publication.
The list of honors appears on page 14.
The magazine’s cover art has varied greatly, ranging from cartoonish to photographic, but somehow the magazine always looked like Luckbox.
Readers could expect just about anything on the outside of the publication. Where else would you see an updated Noah herding animals two-by-two onto a rocket ship? Or how about a monopolistic tech czar rendered with no fewer than three-heads?
Uncle Sam held his ground in a standoff with a Chinese tank. Trump and Biden squared off in the ring just before the 2020 elections. Happy little figures doing everything that’s beneficial for your health populated one cover.
A takeoff on the statue known as The Thinker was juxtaposed with a weathervane to illustrate the art and science of forecasting. A stylized view of the human brain heralded our study of IQ.
The White House floated away, buoyed by balloons inspired by Up, the children’s animated classic. A duck sat down at a computer keyboard. But you get the idea. And you can view every one of our covers for yourself in this special publication.
The Thinking in Bets issue remains one of my favorite editions of Luckbox. The content embodied the editorial objectives of the magazine. The “Guide to Smarter Decisions” is as relevant today as when it was published, and the cover illustrated our deep respect for the intelligence of our readers.”
—JEFF JOSEPH, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
/ art by Satoshi Kambayashi (Aug/Sept 2021)
Folio Eddie Award for Best Full Consumer Issue of 2022
Clockwise: Issue #24 / art by Christian Northeast (November 2021), Issue #25/ art by Jason Schneider (December 2021), Issue #26/ art by Paul Lachine (Jan/Feb 2022), Issue #27/ art by Zohar Lazar (March 2022) WINNER
Clockwise: Issue #29 / art by Pau del Toro (May 2022), Issue #30/ art by Lilian Todd (June 2022), Issue #31/ art by Jason Schneider (July 2o22), Issue #32/ art by Melinda Beck (August 2022)
Clockwise: Issue #33 / art by Mark Wagner (Sept/Oct 2022), Issue #34/ art by Keiji Ishida (November 2022), Issue #35/ art by Jonathan Rosen (December 2022)
#36 / art by Mark Matcho (January 2023)
By mid-2022, we’d published more than 30 issues of Luckbox, and the time had come for a makeover. We wanted a whole new look—inside and out—so we connected with the highly regarded Brooklyn-based team of Robert Priest and Grace Lee. They run Priest + Grace, one of the world’s most prominent magazine design firms.
We asked them to retain the magazine’s content segmentation and pacing but boldly reinvent the publication’s look. One of their first suggestions was to flip the first two sections. Henceforth, we’d lead with the Trends section of lifestyle-oriented articles and follow it with the Topics section of stories with a financial bent. The nuts-and-bolts Trades & Tactics section of how-to investment tips would remain in the back.
The May/June 2023 edition (Issue #39) marked the debut of the Priest + Grace redesign as interpreted by Tim Hussey, our longtime creative director. The striking new look featured a cover with a reimagined nameplate that split the word “Luckbox” into horizontal and vertical elements. We had a colorful reimagined Table of Contents and vivid new graphic elements throughout the publication.
That issue also marked a decision to re-engage freelance illustrator Ian Murray, who has now designed five of our covers. But that’s enough from us. See and enjoy the covers reproduced on these pages.
Cover to Cover
Issue #39 / art by Ian Murray (May/June 2023)
Issue #41 / art by Ian Murray (Winter 2023/24)
