In the film The Devil Wears Prada I always admired Stanley Tucci’s character, art director Nigel Kipling. His assuredness in his job and his confidence that he deserved to ascend from Art Director to Editor spoke to the clout of his position.
Alexy Brodovitch is probably my archetype of the modern art director. While at Harper’s Bazaar from 1934-1958, he was known for his dramatic layouts, white space, and dynamic imagery. Art direction as a creative specialty, collaboration with and discovery of other great visual artists, manipulation of typography, challenging layouts, and visual playfulness set the bar for others who followed. He worked with Man Ray, Richard Avedon, and Henri Cartier-Bresson and was constantly searching for new talent. At Harper’s Bazaar, he was given wide latitude for developing the publication’s look and creating editorial that went beyond the writing itself. The design became as important as the editorial because it was made inseparable.
Moving forward into the last half of the 20th century, Henry Wolf, George Lois, Robert Priest, Rip Georges, and Rhonda Rubinstein all worked at Esquire, pushing a contemporary typographic and visual aesthetic. Lois is especially known for the dramatic and controversial covers he produced for the magazine in the ’60s. Walter Bernhard might have designed the first “city” magazine, New York, but other art directors such as DJ Stout at Texas Monthly, Fred Woodward at Rolling Stone pushed the art form forward. Since the beginning of the 2000s, ADs like Robert Newman at Fortune, Michael Grossman at Entertainment Weekly, and Luke Hayman at Pentagram, Scott Daditch at WIRED, and John Korpics at Premiere Magazine have all continued distinguished careers; it’s just that not many of them are currently art directing a magazine.
But these were all people whose fame as art directors was predicated on work that distinguished the titles they worked on through delight, surprise, and wit. They influenced the editorial structure; they didn’t just reflect it. For designers like me, they were rock stars. Daditch even succeeded Chris Anderson as Editor at WIRED. In some ways, they were like celebrity chefs have become today, capable of adding cachet and their brand to any project they were a part of. Since the Great Recession, it’s fair to say that the role of the art director has receded in the creative Pantheon of iconic media jobs. Even for passionate publication designers, who is there to look up to as a brash young disrupter, like David Carson was in the ’90s?
Perhaps it’s the way that the internet has usurped all the energy from magazines or the way large publishers of consumer titles are still floundering when it comes to finding a workable strategy for monetizing their brands. Even though more magazines are created and distributed today than a decade ago, they are increasingly aimed at small audiences, and many of them are not even printed.
Even big titles have settled into a groove, based on some business model that emphasizes commodity over style. Esquire has become such a visually boring publication today that its rich design heritage is ancient history. George Lois wouldn’t take a second look at a current cover.
Whatever the reason, the era of the magazine art director seems to have passed. The designers I admire were young lions in the ’80s. Who are brave art directors being given the same opportunity today? In fact, just who art directs a website anyway?
