53 min listen
Walter Bernard (Designer: New York, Time, Fortune, more)
Walter Bernard (Designer: New York, Time, Fortune, more)
ratings:
Length:
61 minutes
Released:
May 26, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
When your business partner is Milton Glaser, the most celebrated designer in the world, what does that mean for you? If you’re Walter Bernard, today’s guest, you accept it as the gift it is, and then you go out and make yourself an extraordinary career. _____ Here’s three things you need to know about Walter Bernard: 1) He was the founding art director of New York magazine, 2) he once produced a top-secret overhaul of Time magazine, and later became its art director, and 3), along with Glaser, he’s designed or redesigned over 100 publications around the world. _____ And Bernard is happy to talk about working in Glaser’s shadow: _____ “Milton was extraordinary in his capacity to work, and work quickly, and work brilliantly. And, there was no competition there. I was just kind of a student. And even though we worked together at New York, and I was the art director and he was design director, there was no question that he was the mentor and also the lead.” _____ But as we all know, magazine making is among the most collaborative pursuits in the world. As Gloria Steinem wrote in the foreword of Mag Men, Bernard’s and Glaser’s career retrospective monograph, “There is something about word and visual people sitting together in a room, riffing off each other’s ideas like jazz musicians, arguing and coming up with a result that no one of us would have imagined on our own. It’s as much a proof of freedom as laughter, which is also a mark of editorial meetings.” _____ As Bernard says, “On its most fundamental level, a magazine is a collection of energy and information.” That’s his wheelhouse. Collaboration is where Walter lives. _____ His secret weapon is his calming and confident presence, along with a Rolodex of the greatest photographers and illustrators around—priceless skills for a usually frenzied and chaotic line of work. _____ We talked to Walter about working with George Lois at the height of his powers, the time he and Glaser were redesigning competing newsweeklies just a few feet away from each other, and about the thrilling late-night knocks on his door every Sunday in the late 70s.
Released:
May 26, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (48)
Michele Outland (Designer: Bon Appétit, Gather Journal, Nylon, more): Michele Outland has spent her career at some really beautiful magazines. Beautiful ... because she made them that way. Her resume includes stops at Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food, Domino, Nylon, and Bon Appétit, as well as the magazine she created and launched with her good friend, Fiorella Valdesolo: Gather Journal. Gather, which only published 13 issues, made a powerful impact on the magazine business. In its five-year run, it won a James Beard Award for Visual Storytelling, an Art Director’s Club Award, and 20 medals from the Society of Publication Designers, including being named “Brand of the Year” in 2015. Under her leadership, Bon Appétit won the ASME National Magazine Award for Design along with a slew of SPD awards. We talked to Michele about: the power of internships, her Korean mother’s influence on the way she thinks about food, about how to start a magazine in a post-print world — and when we can ex by Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!)