Recently in Old School Category

AIGA Awards 2015 Medal to former Black Panther Party Art Director (and Revolutionary Artist) Emory Douglas

[This article and interview was originally published on the SPD site in 2009 to coincide with the Emory Douglas exhibit at the New Museum in NYC.]

The fiercest and baddest art director of all time is Emory Douglas, who as Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist for the Black Panther Party designed and illustrated the Black Panther newspaper from 1967-1980. His bold, provocative graphics and illustrations were a signature for the era, and with his designs for the party's posters, buttons, banners, and publications he created one of the most memorable and lasting visual brands of all time. The AIGA has announced that it will award a 2015 Medal to Douglas to acknowledge his brilliant inspiring work and his graphic influence. The award will be presented at the AIGA Gala on April 14, 2015 in New York City.

Be sure to check out the book Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas , which features many of the works on that were exhibited at the Douglas show at the New Museum in 2009, as well as lengthy interviews and background information.… MORE

YSB Magazine: Classic 1990s Covers

The early 1990s was a vibrant time for magazine publishing. It seemed like great new magazines were being launched every day: Entertainment Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, InStyle, the Conde Nast version of Details, Vibe, and many more. One of my favorites from that period was YSB ("Young Sisters and Brothers"), first published by BET in September 1991. An editor's note referred to YSB as "the first national lifestyle magazine geared to the interests and concerns of African American teenagers and young adults." The magazine featured brilliant cover photography of hip hop artists and actors, and a bold graphic look by its creative directors, first Fo Wilson, and later Lance Pettiford. Other art directors at YSB included Elizabeth Rodriguez, Gregory Atkins, Steve Jones, Mia Dahlmer, and Anissa Smith, and the photo editor was Steven Chin. Like many magazines from that era, YSB is woefully under-archived (someone badly needs to do some serious collecting and scanning of Details, Wig Wag, The Source, New York Woman, Arena, Premiere...). Thanks to Lance Pettiford, who is currently doing elegant work as design director at JCK magazine, we've got a dozen very cool and memorable covers of YSB right here at SPD!

(Above): YSB, January 1993. Creative directors: Fo Wilson and Elizabeth Rodriguez, photographer: Jason Keeling.
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Classic Art Department Mastheads #2: Men's Journal, October 1996

For the second in our series of great art department mastheads, we're highlighting the genius cluster of people who worked at Men's Journal during the time of their October 1996 issue. Men's Journal was still published in its oversize format, a lively, elegant, great-looking magazine, filled with visual pleasures. Under the direction of art director David Armario, the magazine seamlessly fused refined typography, beautiful, bold photography, and a highly sophisticated approach to page design. Thanks to everyone from Men's Journal who so kindly contributed their remembrances of the magazine and their co-workers.

Magazine: Men's Journal, October 1996.
David Armario: Art director
Denise Sfraga: Photo editor
Tom Brown: Deputy art director
Kim Gougenheim: Associate photo editor
Dirk Barnett: Designer
Eva Spring: Art assistant
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Classic Art Department Mastheads: First in a Series

We're not only fans of old magazines, we're fans of old magazine mastheads. On a recent search through the Google collection of digitized magazines, we came across the July 1994 issue of Spy, which featured a great collection of folks on the art department masthead. This inspired the first of what we hope is an ongoing series of looks back at classic art departments. Thanks to everyone from the Spy crew who contributed memories (see follow page).

Magazine: Spy, July 1994
Robert George: design director
Amid Capeci: art director
Elisabeth Sinsabaugh: photo editor
Edel Rodriguez: production assistant
Jennifer Lipshy: photo intern

Amy B. Conway: copy editor

See a great slideshow of covers and inside pages from Spy here.
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Buffalo Bills Football Programs, 1960s

Super Bowl XLV (that's 45) is coming up on Sunday, February 6, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. And while the game's packaging features plenty of slick graphics, logos, and other "branding," we here at the Society of Publication Designers prefer a more old-school approach to sports graphics. Today's football game programs feature high-tech visuals without style or character. In the old, pre-AFL-NFL merger days, each team had bespoke programs, oftentimes illustrated by a local cartoonist or artist, and filled with hometown flavor. Thanks to the Buffalo Sports Museum, a great online collection of sports graphics and memorabilia, we've got a collection of Buffalo Bills football programs from 1961-64, all illustrated by hometown art hero Kevin Weil. You don't have to be a sports fan (or from Western New York) to appreciate the brilliant design and illustration of these collected covers.… MORE

NY Talk: 1980s Downtown Paper Art Directed by Mark Michaelson

NY Talk was a downtown arts and culture paper published in the 1980s. Mark Michaelson was the art director from 1984-85 and created a remarkable-looking publication, stunning in its bold, modern, graphic simplicity. For cover imagery he drew on downtown New York artists and his own creative mind. Michaelson went on to art direct New York, Newsweek, Allure, and Radar, among others, and was instrumental in the launch of Entertainment Weekly and the late 90s redesign of Details. In 2006 he published a book of his collection of mugshots, Least Wanted. Here are five classic NY Talk covers.… MORE

The Face magazine, 30th anniversary

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the first publication of legendary UK style and culture magazine The Face. Art directed by Neville Brody from 1981-86, it was groundbreaking both in its content and its design, and spawned countless imitators. The Face was home to many talented art directors over the years, but for me it was Brody's covers and design that remain most memorable for their imaginative use of imagery and creative typography. Sadly, there's no graphic archive of The Face. We've cobbled together a small collection of our favorite covers of The Face, most designed by Nevile Brody. If you have more favorites, please send them along and we'll add them on!… MORE

Rare Specimens, Indeed

So you think you've got rare specimens? I'll see your rare specimen and raise you one major rare specimen that I dug up in preparation for the upcoming HOW conference in June. I recently dug up some old stuff for a talk on inspiration, and while combing through my bookshelves, came across one of my earliest attempts at page layout--my J5 scrapbook. … MORE

Great Baseball Magazine Covers

April 4 is Major League Baseball's opening day, with the World Champion New York Yankees playing the always dangerous Boston Red Sox at 8p in Fenway Park. The New York Mets open the following day, with a home game against the Florida Marlins. We've dug deep into our archives to present some great baseball magazine covers to celebrate the start of the season.… MORE

The New York Rocker

The New York Rocker was the definitive music and culture publication in NYC in the early 1980s. With art direction by Elizabeth van Itallie and photos and photo editing by Laura Levine, it was also very cool-looking. There's no central online archive for Rocker covers, although editor/publisher Andy Schwartz has started a blog of music writing here. But thanks to Elizabeth van Itallie, we've got some Rocker covers on the SPD site, and you can see even more here. … MORE

Fact magazine, designed by Herb Lubalin

For all those excited by the opening of the Lubalin Now show at the Cooper Union Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, we've got a collection of covers from Fact magazine, which Lubalin art directed from 1965-1967. You can see 14 of the 22 covers that Lubalin designed here. Fact was a journal of politics and journalism, printed all in black and white. Each issue featured the work of a single illustrator, and the covers bore the signature Lubalin illustrative typographic style, oftentimes with little or no imagery. While Lubalin's work on Eros and Avant Garde is much better-known, his work on the Fact covers is much stronger typographically and bears his signature style. Fans of Lubalin and his style of typographic design will love the directness and simplicity of the Fact covers.… MORE

Newspaper Album Covers

I've been listening to lots of old albums lately, especially from back in the late 60s/early 70s days. Of course, that was the golden album of rock album cover design, when no expense was spared, and no idea was too trippy. (And then of course, there were those gatefold covers, very useful at party time, or so I've heard...). One of the most popular design trends in those days was to create album covers that looked like newspapers, and not underground or alternative types, but regular old mainstream papers, which were not considered cool by any stretch of the imagination. So here, with no redeeming value, except pure fun, are some classics of the genre.… MORE

The Wilde Years [at SPD]

If you're an SVA graphic design department alum, then you remember sitting in the darkened 23rd Street amphitheater, hoping that your work would appear on screen in Richard's class. If you're as old as I am, you designed your name in many moods on the large handouts that were distributed each week, or created a work of art on a printout of a brick wall. Maybe you even had that assignment where you mailed Richard an envelope that said something about YOU. I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, but I remember those Richard Wilde assignments like they were yesterday.… MORE

Relax Your Mind and Let Your Conscience Be Free

Indulge me for a moment...

VIBE magazine had it's 15th anniversary this year, with a blow-out NYC party in August, and I got all nostalgic. I didn't attend, mind you, as fate would have it, I live in San Francisco now (go figure), working with one of the best art departments in the business at 520 3rd St. (Wired). When I heard that VIBE had hit the big 1-5, and that they were throwing an anniversary bash, it made me think of the scattered 5 years or so I spent at 215 Lexington Ave., working with the equally great art department at VIBE.
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Roadside Type: Name that Font at 60mph

If you are on the Montauk Highway in Amagansett this summer, there are two reasons to pull over at Lunch and grab a quick bite.… MORE