Recently in Magazines Category

Behind the scenes with Editions designer David Robinson

Editions, the highly anticipated magazine App produced by AOL, Mobile has just hit the App store boasting the tag line "The Magazine that Reads You". It's the first digital magazine I know of that integrates tagging of a user's interests and maps content to those choices offering up a unique personalized magazine every day. Recently I got to sit down with David Robinson, Head of UX & Mobile Design for AOL to ask him a few questions about the process from a designers point of view.… MORE

Magazine Giveaway!

This is for those of you who have that extra storage space out in Jersey, or upstate: tomorrow, Saturday, June 25 from 12noon to 2pm, it's a magazine giveaway bonanza. Jeff Glendenning's closed-up shop and heading west, to Portland, OR in fact, and is looking to be sure that all his beloved old issues find a good home. Can you help? Are you looking for copies of
>> (90s) Rolling Stone
>> (90s) Wallpaper
>> The FACE (circa 2000)
>> The NY Times Mag (2001-
>> New York (2003-
+ plenty more? If so, head on over to 208 W 29, #601 (map here) on Saturday from 12noon to 2pm and grab all you can. Free to good homes. And you people are good homes.

Seattle Met Magazine Flash Mob Cover

Seattle Met magazine art director Benjamen Purvis organized a flash mob for the latest cover of their 100 Reason to Love Seattle issue. The cover photo was taken from a helicopter as the crowd of 250 people mobbed below in the city's Gas Works Park. It's a great original idea; a welcome break from the countless formatted "best of" covers that city and regional magazines do every year. Purvis is doing some highly creative work at Seattle Met. Take a look at a couple examples of his energetic, polished design.… MORE

The Best of MagCulture.com

Our favorite magazine info website, MagCulture, has published a newsprint compilation of the best of their first four years of posting, MagCulture.com/Paper. It's a 16-page color tabloid on quality newsprint, with excerpts and links from 74 stories posted on the site since February 2006. You can order it here. MagCulture is a great site with frequent updates on magazines of all kinds, with an emphasis on the UK, where its founder, Jeremy Leslie, is based. It you want to stay on top of the latest news in publication, website, and digital design, it's essential daily reading.

Time for a tiny format for newsweeklies

I've always been a fan of the format of 50s newsweekly. Quick, a digest-sized celebrity and fast news magazine that was published from 1949-1953. Quick was tiny in size, just 4 1/2 x 6 inches (considerably smaller than the Reader's Digest and Jet sizes of today), and it promoted the fact that readers could " carry it in your pocket or your purse...and read it wherever you are." Like the name says, articles were short and fast; it was a highly portable read. The cover designs started out with black and white photos and a single background color, but soon moved to full-color celebrity photo portraits. Quick always promoted itself as a "news weekly," and carried a mix of current events and a heavy dose of celebrity news and lifestyle updates.… MORE

Premiere Issues

Premiere Issues, Archive of Magazine Firsts, is a smart, simple, well-designed website featuring the covers of over 200 debut issues of magazines, ranging from Communication Arts to Ray Gun to Good, with many lesser-known publications as well. The brainchild of designer Danielle Huthart, the site was launched in 2002 and has been consistently updated and upgraded since. In addition to covers, there are credits and mission statements for each magazine. Huthart, who lives and works in Hong Kong at Whitespace studio, describes her motivation in starting the site: "I had already amassed a collection of first issues, and I thought it would be fun to share these with others. I love documenting and clearly I love communication and design. The site is my tribute to all the hard work and energy that goes into the creation of a magazine."… MORE

The design of Gourmet magazine

After Gourmet magazine closed down on October 5, we asked the art staff for some of their favorite feature spreads and covers from the past couple years. Although the covers of Gourmet often garnered the most attention, the insides of the magazine were brilliant and sparkling as well, and received much acclaim and many awards. Here are four covers and 10 beautiful feature openers from Gourmet. Creative director: Richard Ferretti; art director: Erika Oliveira.… MORE

Interview: Dugald Stermer and Ramparts magazine

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Ramparts Magazine

The New York Times has a review of the new history of Ramparts magazine today, A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America, by Peter Richardson. For those who've never seen it, or for those who remember, Ramparts was a striking visual magazine, art directed from 1964-1970 by the great Dugald Stermer (who is better-known today for his illustration work). Dig this cover of Stermer and the mag's editors burning their own draft cards! We'll be posting a more detailed visual history of Ramparts later this week. Images from those days are hard to find....if you've got any you want to contribute to the post, please let us know ASAP.… MORE

Such a T's: Five Days, Five Years of Well Openers

Those crazy kids over at T, The New York Times Style Magazine's The Moment blog are counting down to their fifth-anniversary issue (hitting your Sunday stack this weekend) with some excellent slideshows of the past five years of T well-openers--those gorgeous T's artfully rendered in eye-poppingly different ways each issue. Like any good blogger, they're doling them out slowly, leaving us wanting more and giving us reasons to hit refresh over and over. And over.

Checkout Monday's Best of 2004 & 2005 slideshow here and Tuesday's Best of 2006 eye candy here. Click on this link for the full, updating-daily set if you want to, um, refresh yourself over and over.

In the meantime, happy 5th T!