GLAMOUR

It's more than reassuring to pass by a newsstand and see magazines celebrating major-milestone birthdays these days... one of those, Glamour, hit recently with an issue devoted to celebrating its 70th! Design Director Geraldine Hessler and Photo Director Suzanne Donaldson and their team dedicated months to making this more than just another "special issue" and we're happy to share one of their big anniversary features here:

In honor of the magazine's seventieth anniversary, we asked 10 of America's top female artists to define the concept we're named for: glamour. They answered using charcoal, paint, cameras, neon lights, resin, dollhouse furniture and pink sugar. Take a look!

Seventy years ago this magazine launched with the breathy, starstruck name Glamour of Hollywood. It was 1939, and Tinseltown was at the height of its golden age, lit up by gorgeous divas like Greta Garbo and Bette Davis. By spring of 1941 we'd dropped "of Hollywood" from our title, and were increasingly celebrating the glamour of real women's real lives. For this special birthday edition, our photo director, Suzanne Donaldson, invited 10 fascinating female artists to show us what glamour means to women today. "I got a broad range of responses, from gorgeous to disturbing" says Donaldson. "We are so used to being enticed by photographs in magazines, but this art doesn't offer easy answers; it pokes the reader and poses the challenge: What is glamour to you?" It's wonderfully impossible to sum up the images that appear both here and in a major exhibit at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City. What does seem clear is that for theses artist, glamour has nothing to do with conforming. As the author Bell Hooks said. "The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is. It's to imagine what is possible."
Go ahead: Imagine.

Below are the original spreads from the magazine's anniversary issue, as well as original photography of the artists at work creating their tributes.















NEW WORK is a new recurring feature. We'll welcome anything that's gone to the printer recently, something you're especially proud of and think might be inspiring to the membership and readers of Grids. We'll note the credits and the publication and shine a little light on the latest and greatest in publication design. Please reduce your layouts to no larger than 1200 pixels wide and don't forget to include all relevant credits and a little background (if you feel like). Send your submissions to tips@spd.org and we'll post them as we get them.

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