Holly Catford, Pit Magazine
Holly Catford has been working at London editorial design studio Esterson Associates since 2012, working with Simon Esterson on projects including Eye, Pulp and the recent Sunday Times redesign. She also worked with us at magCulture on our redesign of Noble Rot, and has just launched Pit, a new magazine about food and fire.
As ever, we asked Holly to select a current magazine, an old magazine and one other thing.
A new thing: New York magazine, Bobby Dohety’s food photography.
I've been a New York subscriber for years now (that and the New Yorker, I seem to read more NY-based magazines that anything else), I’m totally obsessed with it. Especially Bobby’s food pictures, they're bold and fun. Not always focused on making food look delicious, and using it as a graphic object. We all know that burgers taste good, lets make them look interesting.
An old thing: The Complete Imbiber #1
Simon Esterson showed me these (this happens A LOT, see also Ruari McLean’s book ‘Magazine Design’) when Jeremy and I started doing Noble Rot, and I ran over to eBay straight away. This is the first issue of the legendary wine magazine, art directed by FHK Henrion and edited by Cyril Ray in 1956. It's full of articles by amazing writers. That combined with FHK's brilliant used of stock engravings and two colours throughout make it really really exciting. I look at these so much, especially doing History Today where we rely on engravings a lot.
An another thing: ‘Norwegian Wood’
This is exactly what it says on the cover, it’s about chopping storing and using wood. With a few wood pile porn pictures. It’s not a beautiful book inside, but it's really interesting. Plus the cover is lovely.