Though TIME tries to plan its cover art in advance, breaking news and shifting deadlines can mean that our cover artists have barely a day to do their work. Fortunately, they are assisted in that task by Deputy Art Director Rudy Hoglund, whose deft hand with a preliminary sketch can some times make all the difference. Late last week the magazine's editors were meeting to change the cover story to this week's report on growing opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hoglund, who was sitting in for vacationing Art Director Walter Bernard, began sketching on his pad even as the editors talked. Within minutes, he had drawn a cover image to accompany the story. His inspiration was the Russian bear that had loomed pictorially over Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in a prescient cover he had designed last January for the "Crescent of Crisis." Says Hoglund: "Back then we were careful to make the bear look interested but not too threatening, no bared teeth. This time, I saw the bear reaching into Afghanistan, and there was no doubt about it--his paw had claws." Hoglund, an art director for More, the now defunct journalism review, has done plenty of fast cover drafting since he joined TIME in 1977. "Disaster and late-breaking cover stories have a way of striking whenever Walter is away," he says. "First, the New York City blackout in 1977; next, the election of Pope John Paul I; then, the Jonestown massacre. Last March we joked that nuclear disaster would arrive during his next vacation, and, sure enough, that's when Three Mile Island happened."

In calmer times, when both are around, Bernard and Hoglund plan TIME'S covers together, preparing separate sketches and then modifying each other's concepts. "We design differently," says Bernard. "Rudy never gives me a mirror image of what I am thinking." Once a cover idea is approved by the editors, an artist is commissioned to turn out the finished product.

"Choosing the artist is easy," says Hoglund, "the problem is: Is he available, especially on an overnight assignment?" Hoglund found that "Crescent of Crisis" Artist Doug Johnson was committed to another project last week.

But Johnson, who had been anticipating the return of his Soviet bear, found the prospect irresistible. "I postponed the other job," says the artist, "by telling them that 'a matter of national security had come up.' "

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