While Boris Artzybasheff was painting his cover of David Lilienthal for TIME'S Aug. 4 issue, he telephoned Assistant Managing Editor Dana Tasker and asked: "What color do you think atomic energy is?"
The result of the ensuing conversation, as illustrated by the Lilienthal cover, may or may not be what atomic energy looks like (they agreed it was purple and yellow), but it serves to illuminate the kind of thought and detail that go into the making of our covers. After eight years they have evolved into a new kind of journalistic portraiture that has become TIME'S trademark. To try to answer...
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