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Ian Birch on great magazine covers
I'm happy to report that my out-of-control recent
/older
/"vintage"
magazine acquisition campaign continues to rage unabated. Facebook Marketplace, ebay, Maxx Sold, library bookstores, book warehouses, thrift stores, yard sales...I'm easy. Really not picky about which pub I drink at.
What I hoist is based mostly on gut reaction to arresting
cover
and spread
designs, re-sell potential (namely, is there a sexy celebrity kisser
on the cover); and intelligence about "great" art directors gathered from a few beautiful books
picked up over the past year or so, among them: Magazine Design by Owens, Surprise Me ( riffing/ripping off famed art director Alexey Brodovitch's exhortation to "Astonish me!") by Horst Moser, and Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them, by Ian Birch.
I found Ian's book at Budget Books, an English-language bookshop in Prague, and loved it immediately; full of exactly the kind of informative detail about ground-breaking art directors that I’m after. Flipping around the credits I noticed that Hannah Knowles
was one of its editors. I'd interviewed her back when she was senior commissioning editor at Canongate (she's now in charge of editorial at Faber), listen here. So I sent her an email asking for Ian's contact details and away we went. I had him on the show.
Ian is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, Grazia."
Uncovered kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go if you want to interview the people who both created them and are still alive, and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.
--
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe
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By Nigel BealeI'm happy to report that my out-of-control recent
/older
/"vintage"
magazine acquisition campaign continues to rage unabated. Facebook Marketplace, ebay, Maxx Sold, library bookstores, book warehouses, thrift stores, yard sales...I'm easy. Really not picky about which pub I drink at.
What I hoist is based mostly on gut reaction to arresting
cover
and spread
designs, re-sell potential (namely, is there a sexy celebrity kisser
on the cover); and intelligence about "great" art directors gathered from a few beautiful books
picked up over the past year or so, among them: Magazine Design by Owens, Surprise Me ( riffing/ripping off famed art director Alexey Brodovitch's exhortation to "Astonish me!") by Horst Moser, and Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them, by Ian Birch.
I found Ian's book at Budget Books, an English-language bookshop in Prague, and loved it immediately; full of exactly the kind of informative detail about ground-breaking art directors that I’m after. Flipping around the credits I noticed that Hannah Knowles
was one of its editors. I'd interviewed her back when she was senior commissioning editor at Canongate (she's now in charge of editorial at Faber), listen here. So I sent her an email asking for Ian's contact details and away we went. I had him on the show.
Ian is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, Grazia."
Uncovered kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go if you want to interview the people who both created them and are still alive, and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.
--
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe