Magazine of the week: Draft #6
It’s been a couple of years since issue 5, but here at last is issue 6 of Draft magazine.
Your favourite covers #6
Here’s the sixth set of covers, three conceptual images remarkable for their strength whether or not you get the conceptual thinking behind them.
The man who launched New York
A long read, but worth the effort – Tom Wolfe on how editor Clay Felker took a Sunday newspaper supplement and created New York magazine; ‘The scene was a breakfast at The Four Seasons for 1,000 advertisers, potential advertisers, media folk, PR people… Start-ups have their problems. The most interesting was the sight of one of the country’s best-known illustrators and designers, Milton Glaser, now art director for Clay, desperately trying to add a decorative black bar above the logo, New York, with a straight-edge and a drafting pen—upon each of the 1,000 copies—at a rate faster than the guests could come in’.
(thanks Richard)
This year’s D&AD jury
The Magazine and Newspaper jury has been confirmed for this year’s D&AD Awards.
Led by Terry Jones (do I need to say who he is?), the other five judges are: Ally Palmer (Edinburgh-based newspaper designer), Janet Froelich (New York Times magazine) , Kevin Bayliss (The Independent) , Paul Cohen (creator of last year’s sole yellow pencil winner Draft) and Stuart Geddes (Australia’s wall-poster publication Is Not Magazine).
D&AD Awards 2008
The call for entries for the 2008 D&AD Awards is under way.
Historically, these cross-disciplinary creative awards have been very supportive of magazines. When the Awards first started in the sixties titles like Nova and the Sunday Times Magazine regularly featured as winners. Later that support faded but over the past few years the D&AD team have been working to attract editorial designers to enter again.
The best magazines in the world?
The new D&AD Annual was launched last night, featuring the creative work judged to be the best by the teams of jurors last Spring.
I was one of the jurors in this year’s Magazine and Newspaper category and seeing it all together in the book I’m generally happy with what we selected. The judging process really is as rigorous as D&AD claim, with secret ballots through several rounds to decide what wins what. The upside of their process is individual jurors can vote with their own mind rather than under pressure from fellow jurors. But there’s a downside too, with the votes sometimes leading to the ‘safe’ projects being selected while more contentious items split the jurors and disappear.
Draft wins D&AD pencil
Congratulations to Draft magazine, the one magazine winner of a D&AD pencil last night. Full results here.
US Post rates
I reprint this email forwarded by Kyle at Slash magazine. It’s a story doing the rounds online, sounds like a very serious issue for independent magazine makers in the States.
D&AD nomination
There’s already a bit of discussion out there about the annual overshadowing of design by advertising at the D&AD Awards (47-7), but even more disappointingly from my – our – point of view only one of those seven design nominations comes from the Magazines and Newspapers category. That one, Draft‘s Julien Opie lenticular cover, above, is a beautiful cover and I hope it goes on to win a Yellow Pencil (I was one of the judges of the category and the process is so rigid even we don’t know if it got voted a winner).
I’ve featured this cover here before. Far from being a gimmick, it is a perfect combination of design and technology. The jpegs above show the front and back covers, but the real magazine uses lenticulars to animate the outline. Opie’s simple line drawing is ideally suited to this lenticular effect – never have lenticulars been so sexy.
Draft magazine
Issue four of Draft magazine has been out a while now, but is worth seeing for it’s cover featuring a lenticular by Julian Opie. I’ve always liked Opie’s work, both his personal and commercial (Blur covers) artworks have a simplicity and strength that others working with the same kind of line-art lack. The Draft cover is typical of how he can adapt his seemingly simple style to work using different technologies. Read the rest of this entry
