PAW Remembers 1981 Cover by Rob Smiley

The Princeton Alumni Weekly's Throwback Thursday feature on February 25 looked back fondly on Rob Smiley's New Yorker-inspired cover that appeared on the May 4, 1981 cover.  The item said,

Princeton history columnist Gregg Lange ’70 once called Rob Smiley ’80’s May 4, 1981, cover image — pictured at right — “the most successful PAW cover of all time, and my favorite by far.”

The illustration shows a map of Princeton and beyond, executed by Smiley as an inspired parody of Saul Steinberg’s famous cover for The New Yorker, titled “View of the World from 9th Avenue.” Steinberg’s map ran in 1976; Smiley’s ran five years later (with the standard PAW banner; the New Yorker-style type was added for a poster version of the image).

“The loving touches — the WPRB radio tower on Holder Hall, the prominence of the Nassau Hall bell, PJ’s Pancake House, and even the New Yorker typeface replacing the PAW banner, were executed brilliantly by Smiley,” Lange wrote. “The resulting homage has been one of the few PAW covers to be reproduced for the public by popular demand, not to mention sold for real money.”