Who better to welcome an iconic shift at Rolling Stone than self-proclaimed agent of change Barack Obama? The presidential candidate beams on the smaller, standard-sized cover of the Oct. 30 issue, which features a glossier, thicker look after 41 years of the large format. Last month's final big issue featured a John McCain caricature flying a plane downwards, the AP reports.
“Like the man we are featuring on the cover for the third time in 7 months … we embrace the idea of change,” editor Jann Wenner writes in the upcoming issue. The rack-friendly format may boost single-copy sales and allows for more pages—and thus, more ads—with the same production costs. (More magazine stories.)