Time Marches On

This beautiful image from the Flickr stream of the Software Studies Cultural Analytics Project shows how the covers of TIME magazine can be graphed over time.

The x axis is time, the y axis is a composite dimension of brightness, hue, and saturation measures that were automatically extracted from the images.

The graph shows the complicated transition from black and white to color printing and indicates some basic design trends in various eras of the publication.

Given the valences of TIME magazine covers in the history of American political rhetoric, it is an interesting set of images to digitize and data mine.