Get to know the new generation of magazines

Every time I sit down to write about a piece about magazines I find myself wondering, does the reader know about the new generation of print magazines? Do I need to explain again that they not only exist but are quietly booming, building new audiences and taking advantage of the internet and social media to market themselves to global audiences?

At magCulture we have our own channels to promote these magazines, both IRL and online, and with that comes our curation of favourites and recommended examples. We’re proud of our choices, but it’s always refreshing to see what others select. The D&AD Awards winners list always offers a pleasing mix of the obvious and the surprising, some winners crossing over with our preferences, and others being that rare project that only an international awards programme can turn up. The winners also offer insight into more general creative themes.

The first theme to note is an absence. The commercial world of the glossy monthly magazine was never a mainstay of the D&AD Awards, but they had a presence over the years—a particular era of Elle sticks in my mind. But not now. The traditional ‘big’ mags that still exist have fallen away in every sense and creativity hasn’t avoided that drop. Major magazine brands have ceded their once distinct national identities in favour of bland international vehicles that share content and lack credible art direction and design.

As the glossies have faded, the new indies have stepped up to fill the gap and are well represented in the Awards again this year. INQUE and Backstage Talks lead with bold design schemes—by Matt Willey and Chloe Scheffe respectively—that enhance the strong editorial ideas on art and creativity they present. Their sense of editorial adventure mocks the failures of the big magazines.

In their wake, smaller indie winners focus on tight niches, several of which use their physical format to express their subjects, a common trait in the sector. Dysfluent is a collaborative, creative practice about stammering whose main output is a print magazine. Its typographic front cover folds out to cleverly reflect the stammerer’s struggle with words, and drawing magazine Fukt’s cover uses a similar device to render its theme—The Unknown—unreadable. The short print runs of the indies makes such physical playfulness a practical option and highlight the power of the physical object.

The success of the indies has not gone unnoticed in other areas of publishing. Another winner was The Guardian’s The Long Read, which brings together the best of the newspapers’ long-form journalism using strong type and light illustration. London’s Evening Standard newspaper recently announced the end of its daily schedule in favour of a weekly publication; it would do well to follow The Guardian and look to the Indies for inspiration.

An increasing number of brands have done just that. The customer magazine has often suffered from being over-branded, but a new generation of promotional magazines uses more subtle positioning. International art galleries such as the Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth both produce hefty magazines to promote their respective positions in the art world; at the other end of the scale, London bookshop Backstory has just launched a magazine about books and book selling.

Two D&AD winners originate from brands, and both add a further twist by being digital brands pivoting to print. Notebook is a magazine for people passionate about movies, classically designed by Pablo Martin and his in-house team It barely mentions its publisher, film streamer MUBI, instead using great editorial and design to express the passion the streamer and its audience share for movies old and new. It’s produced to build community, a quality that brands are realising can be more powerful and long-lasting in print than digital.

Secret Menu is a deliberately brasher proposition than Notebook—the two could hardly be more different, demonstrating another key attribute of print, variety. Published by US food delivery service DoorDash, designer Studio Yukiko (already responsible for indies Flaneur and Sofa) processes vernacular fast food imagery through a kitsch palette of colours and fonts to produce a bright, fun publication that adds a veneer of cool to an otherwise commodity brand.

Other examples of digital brands producing print magazines include creative platforms WeTransfer and Figma, while film production company A24 regularly uses print magazines to promote their productions.

All these publications follow the basic tenet of being a magazine—they’re part of a series. But another D&AD winner was a one-off publication that adopted the guise of a newspaper and juxtaposed previously published stories of violence against women with men’s excuses for inaction. The Daily Issue—note the punning title—was distributed to politicians and journalists across Australia to draw attention to the issue. Such event publishing—creating one-off pieces to attract attention to a subject—can be a powerful tool in our attention economy when used intelligently like this.

The Guardian newspaper took the idea of a one-off further for a special project reflecting on their Manchester founders’ 19th-century links with slavery. Titled Cotton Capital, the D&AD winning report appeared in print and online versions featuring a frayed tapestry version of the first edition of the newspaper to reveal the cotton for which millions of Africans were transported and enslaved.

Event publishing is not a new thing; special themed issues have always been an important part of the magazine schedule.

The New York Times Magazine, a serial winner at D&AD, is back on the winners list again this year. Long at the forefront of contemporary editorial design and art direction, its dominance is signalled by wins across multiple projects.

This year the magazine won for its opening spreads, extraordinary designs that express stories in seemingly endlessly varied visual tones, sharing a subtlety of approach that’s led the magazine to wins in almost every creative award across the world for the past decade and more. The magazine team also won for its NYT Kids broadsheet publication, a brilliant amalgamation of typography and illustrations drawn from the long tradition of children’s books and stories by its design director Debra Bishop.

Arguably their most interesting win was for their magazine interactives, a new direction for the magazine. The design team, led by Creative Director Gail Bichler, began creating bespoke digital versions of lead stories from the print issue. These are not web versions of print stories, but self-contained, animated editorial experiences using audio, video and animation alongside the magazine’s trademark visual talent. This exciting new direction has already begun to lead story development among the editors and designers, meaning that in some cases the digital rather than print version is the primary channel for a story.

Seeing a print designer of Bichler’s ability turning to digital is a fascinating development. But in this context is it really that different to print design? The core discipline of magazine design is the skilful combination of text and images to tell a story, and all the listed winners—print and digital—are doing just that. The winners here represent why I still believe in the power of magazines to thrill, engage and surprise.