FOR a suitable representation of I hippie culture, we decided to turn to hippie artists. This week's cover is the work of a kind of artistic co operative called the Group Image--about 30 people who live in Manhattan's East Village and turn out paintings and posters, play music in various New York cafes, and publish a magazine called Inner space. The artists in the group who contributed most to the cover were three Milwaukee boys named Roger. Peter and Jimmy; they dislike apportioning credit or using their family names. "We are waiting for another name," they explain. In the photo above, some group members (including Roger and Peter) display a picture of an old Indian called Gordon Whitefoot that they have adopted as their logo, a collective symbol to substitute for their individual identities.

Most members of the TIME staff consider themselves reasonably hip, but writing and reporting the hippie cover presented problems. One involved clothes. To put her subjects at ease during interviews. Researcher Katie Kelly decided to disguise herself as a hippie wearing, in various combinations, faded old Nebraska Levi's, a red minidress and an unwashed London Fog raincoat. Surveying Galahad's Pad in the East Village for color picture possibilities, Andrea Svedberg had her arms ornamented hippie style with Day-Glo paints. San Francisco Bureau Chief Judson Gooding was gauche enough to wear a suit and tie to a celebration in Golden Gate Park, and was suspected of being a "narco" (narcotics agent). Malcolm Carter, TIME'S Stanford University stringer, did much better with a second-hand kelly-green flannel shirt and a string of Philippine seed beads. Washington Correspondent Philip Mandelkorn managed to get by in ordinary sports clothes, but he found reporting difficult. Entering a hippie guru's pad "was like jumping into a cool pool on a hot summer day. I just didn't feel like taking notes." The most difficult dress problem was encountered by Writer Robert Jones, who visited a commune called Morning Star near Sebastopol, Calif., where he was invited to join the yoga exercises. They are usually done in the nude. Jones took off only his shoes.

Despite such straight reticence, Jones, who "tried the beatnik thing" in his Michigan college days in the '50s, was no stranger to hippiedom. He wrote TIME'S Man of the Year cover story on the younger generation. Before starting out on this one, he drafted a long query to our correspondents, and when a Los Angeles hippie got a look at it, he said: "Man, that cat knows what he is talking about." We think he does.

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