Designing Magazines

The blog has been around for a while, but now here’s the book: Jandos Rothstein’s ‘Designing Magazines’ has just been published. It’s a very good book – tons of information about the subject that goes beyond the usual quick advice. Plenty of interviews with major figures, including Mario Garcia, John Plunkett from Wired and George Lois, along with a conversation between the editor (Dan Rolleri) and art director (Martin Venenzky) of one of my favourite (and sadly ceased) magazines Speak.

Rothstein teaches the subject and this shows – it’s very much a book of written content rather than a picture book. The only negatives are that it’s produced in black and white, is not particularly well designed (a curious oversight given it’s subject) and is perhaps inevitably very US-orientated. Several of the chapters – Steven Heller’s about Wallpaper* and Nest for example – seem curiously out of date. But despite these points, ‘Designing Magazines’ is a must-have for anyone interested in taking editorial design seriously.