2016 was a year of unprecedented tumult for most of the world, with the possible exception of political journalists. Before Trump, Putin, Le Pen and the gang took centre-stage, it was Britain that caught the attention of the world, particularly in June when they spectacularly Brexited from the EU. Political magazines around the world responded with a series of covers that take some very clear themes and run them in different directions, and here’s a breakdown of some of the major trends.

It makes sense, given the context, to start at home. In the run-up to June 23rd, British political magazines staked out their arguments for and against Brexit. The New Statesman repeatedly focused on the gang of Brexiteers, using their unappealing likenesses as a negative talisman for the campaign. At the start of June they used this football club image — throwing Putin, Le Pen, George Galloway, and Trump in for good measure — to caricature the ragtag nature of the Out campaign.

Across the political spectrum, conservative magazine The Spectator were attacking the establishment in a similarly lampooning manner. This Morten Morland illustration of David Cameron being bitten by a bulldog (a recurring motif which we will revisit) was particularly eye-catching, and so good that it was reused for Tim Shipman’s book, All Out War.

And The Spectator staked out their position more clearly with their pro-Brexit cover, depicting Britain as a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis of the European Union. This is a fairly rare example, amongst Brexit magazine covers, of a positive depiction of the Leave argument: on both Leave and Remain sides, the images tend to be negative, playing on fears, rather than hopes or expectations. The butterfly image was eye-catching and remains one of the most popular images used by Brexit supporters.

The Spectator’s cover was a plea to Brexiteers, but there were call-to-arms going out across the board. Der Spiegel — who have developed in a global reputation for social media friendly, and often quite brilliant, covers — produced this uncharacteristically soppy offering (you need only to consider their anti-Trump covers to realise how fierce they can be).

This cover was remarkably similar to the one produced by Algemeen Dagblad (which is a newspaper, not a magazine, but included here for thematic reference), both visually and in the tone of the argument.

It wasn’t just your usual stable of political magazines who were weighing in with these Brexit covers. Here WetherspoonNews — the in-house magazine for Britain’s largest chain of pubs — produce a referendum related cover. The EU stars you see on this will prove to be another of the key motifs of Brexit covers.

Two covers from French magazine Courrier International stick out from the referendum run-up. Firstly, the magazine depicts the unlikely sight of Boris Johnson going toe-to-toe with Yanis Vafoufakis in a football match. This is, presumably, related to the images of Johnson playing sports, somewhat aggressively, with small children. As a metaphor, it doesn’t seem to have really caught on.

Even though I claimed the metaphor didn’t catch on, the proximity of the referendum to the Euro 2016 football tournament did produce this cynical Private Eye cover, which is aimed more at the England football team than the country heading to the polls.

The other Courrier International cover is more effective. Here the EU flag takes centre stage, as Britain — complete with the Darwin Awards-esque handsaw — cuts its way out of the flag, plunging towards the unknown. The headline ‘BYEBYE BRITAIN?’ is another example of a trend amongst the European magazines, of writing their Brexit-related copy in English (as we might expect English-language magazines to say ‘au revoir’ or ‘adios’ in other circumstances).

Of all the European countries, Poland could make an argument to being most closely caught up in the debates about Brexit. This cover from Polityka magazine stakes the case for Brexit as a Polish issue, and uses the combined face paint of the Polish and British flags to depict their union. The EU stars are nowhere in sight — perhaps because of Poland’s own Euroscepticism — but the face paint image will recur in Polish coverage, perhaps a symptom of a culture that is caught up in football fanaticism (football again, maybe I spoke too soon…).

Finally, returning to The Spectator again, we see this cover which combines several of the most cliched elements of Brexit covers. Britannia, draped in the EU flag with a Union Jack shield, is having her covering pulled off by a lion (perhaps one of the three lions passant depicted on the Royal Arms of England). The temptation towards obvious imagery runs throughout, though the combination of several different elements makes this feel cluttered.

And then, post June-23rd, the mood of the covers changed, just as they did after Trump’s election. Magazines no longer had to state a case, they simply had to report on the fallout. This cover from The Week is pretty typical: Angela Merkel (the figure most associated with the EU, for convenience of caricature reasons) watches as that pesky British bulldog tears the EU flag to pieces. This is about as unsubtle as they come.

But The Week were not alone in this bleak outlook. This Global Economics cover again uses Frau Merkel as synecdoche for the European Union at large, using J.Howard Miller’s criminally overused ‘We Can Do It!’ propaganda piece to produce this despairing image. I am not clear whether it is intentionally set against the backdrop of a Ukrainian flag.

The Week produce a better offering with this Boris-led cover, which shows the campaign wrecking through Westminster. It shows three other figures, and is rather prescient in their presentation: Cameron plunging to his death, Sturgeon looking on smugly, and hapless Corbyn tripping over his own feet.

Back over in Poland, a different magazine — Do Rzeczy — uses that same image of the Polish flag on facepaint (in front of a particularly crap stock image of Westminster) to sing of Europe’s defeat.

If you think that image is not very aesthetically pleasing, their competitors at Polityka go for this picture of a glum Norman Davies — the British historian of Poland — for their splash. Davies is hardly a key figure in the debate, though he is writing an apology to their magazine, so it is odd to see him on the front cover of a major European magazine.

Der Spiegel produced this rather arresting image of the Queen and Prince Philip walking out of a circle of EU stars, complete with a pessimistic slogan reading ‘Europe is dead’. This is particularly striking because of of its valedictory nature — in an ill-tempered debate, this is more pensive.

For a less pensive view altogether, try this New Statesman cover, which shows that same gang of Brexiteers, now in victory mode. This cover has not aged well (and I’m not talking about the dodgy photoshop) as the three-headed hydra of Grayling, Hannan and Duncan-Smith seems rather irrelevant given the rise of David Davis and Liam Fox (and even Douglas Carswell) within the post-Brexit debate.

Still, it’s better than this drab cover from British magazine Prospect. In a race with anonymous businessmen (I suppose), Britain is apparently disadvantaged from the off. Sensationalism is, obviously, to be avoided, but if this cover was designed with the intention of selling magazines, then I cannot believe they couldn’t dream up a more grabby image.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, The Spectator had moved on from their triumphant Brexit-backing to produce this rare text-based cover, which is a slightly more equivocal look at Brexit. To succeed the optimism of the British butterfly with a ‘Don’t panic!’ front page might have caused giggling in Westminster, but in a period of profound panic, it is part of a contemporary mosaic.

The Economist make an entry here with a cover that shows a frayed Union Jack. The difficulty of this visual metaphor is that it worked better for the Scottish referendum than with the EU debate, where the key is a move away from Europe. As such, this ‘tragic split’ cover is aesthetically appealing but feels somewhat inconsequential as a post-result cover.

In any case, it’s better than this offering, which wants to be hyperbolic whilst also being deeply silly. An unusual and unsatisfying pairing of desires.

In a similar vein, this later cover from the New Statesman conflates Brexit and Scottish independence to produce a cover which is visually more inward looking. The tatty Union Jack is, by now, a tired image.

But whilst The Economist was focusing on the reaction in UK politics, magazines were starting to expand the result out to the rest of Europe, and, indeed, the rest of the world. This cover from Profil, an Austrian magazine, shows Trump, Erdogan, ISIS and Johnson (Brexit) under the headline ‘Just wrong: the world is crazy’ (a little rich for a country that had just given 46% of the popular vote to a far-right presidential candidate).

The opposite to this Profil cover might be this, from French magazine Marianne, which shows populist movements across Europe tipping the scales in favour of the people. ‘The revenge of the people’ it trumpets, ‘after Brexit, democracy!’.

This rather elegant TIME cover neatly captures the mood in Europe, and the fear that a domino effect was being set off. The dominos are quite an obvious metaphor, but the single star on each of them (and yes, there are 28) is pleasingly clean. In its tone, this is similar to the Der Spiegel cover with the Queen exiting, but this cover is more ominous, more forward looking.

Whilst some of these covers seem prescient, some seem rather ill-judged. This barnstorming Bloomberg Businessweek cover looks rather out-of-touch following Donald Trump’s election in November.

But for text-based covers, this second Bloomberg Businessweek one is more satisfying. The scattering of the EU stars, out of their traditional loop, is a rather subtle way of depicting discord, rather than disintegration. In its slight ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ vibe, this cover is actually more nuanced than many similar offerings.

After-Brexit presents a lot more covers that focus in on specific issues, such as this New Statesman cover, following the Theresa May coronation that depicts her as the ‘Brexit PM’.

And this Spectator cover, which looks at the Article 50 decision in the High Court, which proved a contentious subject in the months following Brexit.

Finally, it makes sense to look across the pond at this Barry Blitt cover for the New Yorker, which shows Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, as they head out over the white cliffs of Dover (surprisingly their only appearance on this list of visual cliches). This is a neat summary of how Brexit was viewed by the liberal media in America (in the smug period before they elected Donald Trump), and even though I’m not a huge fan of Blitt’s covers, there’s something pleasingly undramatic about this.

And, from Berlin, this personal favourite: an image of a teacup (another British metaphor, as if we needed any more) spilling the EU flag out like water. This is a beautiful illustration, but also as a storm in a teacup exceeding the bounds of the teacup, sums up how a very British problem was seen by the rest of the world. The Berlin Policy Journal’s fairly neutral, understated but quietly moving image is the best of the bunch.