By Robin Benson / Editor, Past PrintWhat's the best designed magazine you ever saw? Oh, that's easy you might say. OK, a few clarifications. I don't mean a title that has several knock-out spreads in the middle but one that works for the reader (that's who you do it for after all) from the cover to the last page. One that has a contents page that spells out the goodies on offer, and maybe a reader could find something immediately and turn to that page
A magazine that has thought about the editorial design on those half pages front and back that have ads next to them, chosen a typeface with a readable point size for the text, and a display face that puts across the message easily, and combined with photos and graphics pulls the reader into a spread. A magazine where the design creates a natural flow to the editorial and all those typographic reader aids--bylines, intros, pull quotes, sidebars, captions, page numbers--have been well chosen and work. A design that isn't noticeable by the reader because all the elements blend together issue after issue so that the words and images are the only things that stand out.
I expect your list is a bit shorter now but there are magazines, past and present, that are beautifully designed. The best one I ever saw was
Quality, published by Time Inc. in 1987. The Editor was
Landon Jones; the Assistant Managing Editor and art director of magazine development at Time Inc. was
Mary K. Baumann;
Nora Sheehan was the Art Director, and
Michele McNally (now photography director at
The New York Times) was the Picture Editor. Sheehan recently told me that the magazine was produced by an in-house magazine group at Time Inc. and the first issue, of about 100,000 copies, was mailed to a select upmarket readership. Everyone at Time Inc. liked it but the subscription returns probably weren't enough to justify its continuance.
Below is the first (and only) issue, dated Winter 1987. I thought it worked from the cover onwards.
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By Ward Sutton
