My first story for The Boston Globe Ideas section is about pro football game day programs, and how their design has changed over the years…and what it means. The story takes a look at some vintage Boston Patriots programs from the early 1960s, featuring cover designs and illustrations by Boston Globe sports cartoonist Phil Bissell. […]
My latest cover review for Folio: The October 17, 2014 issue of Entertainment Weekly, featuring a graphically intense, black and white photograph of Michael Keaton in a preview of the Birdman movie, is one of the coolest and most iconic magazine covers of the past year. Photographer Art Streiber, design director Tim Leong, photography director […]
The Society of Publication Designers hosted an historic gathering of Entertainment Weekly design directors on September 30 at the SVA Theatre in New York City. All seven of the magazine’s design directors from its 25-year history were present and discussed the visual history of the groundbreaking weekly (I was design director of EW from 1994-96). […]
The Content Desk website highlights seven art directors in its recent Seven Designers to Worship feature, including Robert Newman. “Content is all about producing the things that people like or find useful. This is impossible without good design to set the work off.” In addition to Robert Newman, the list includes Matt Wiley of Conde […]
So many indie magazine covers look sleepy and dull, like the tabletop art books they emulate. Fortunately, there’s Wax Poetics, whose covers are brilliant splashes of imagery, that resemble old-fashioned LPs filled with engaging brightness and poster-like impact. Case in point: the latest cover, issue #59. It features a photo by Jonathan Mannion of Aaliyah, […]
I’m a big fan of the August-September cover of Organic Gardening, art directed by Susan Eugster and featuring an illustration by Peter Donnelly. I’ve reviewed the cover as the latest Face Up column for Folio online. This is a very different approach for a gardening and lifestyle magazine, with the illustration taking over the entire […]
I’ve been a big fan of Michelle Obama‘s many magazine covers, so I was happy to review her latest cover on Essence for the Folio: online Face Up column. The cover was photographed by Kwaku Alston, and art directed by Erika Perry. Michelle Obama has become a top magazine cover celebrity, arguably the top celebrity […]
My new review for the Folio: online Face Up column looks at the July-August 2014 cover of Mother Jones, “Koch vs. Koch.” The cover was art directed by Ivylise Simones, and features a tabloid parody of right-wing bogeymen the Koch Brothers. The parody is spot on, with just the right mix of funkiness and visual […]
A recent edition of Pick Me Up Radio, hosted by magCulture’s Jeremy Leslie, featured a group of top magazine makers talking about independent publishing. Michael Bojkowski, Kati Krause, Jean Snow, Andrew Losowsky, and Robert Newman each described their three favorite indie magazines. You can heart the entire show, or individual podcasts of each person here. […]
Magazine covers featuring musical artists are inherently cool, whether the reader is a tween or a boomer. They come loaded with style, after all. (How many different looks—including varieties-not-found-in-nature of hair color—have Madonna and Bowie rocked on their many covers over the decades?) The result: memorable, provocative and sometimes flat-out crazy images of the stars. […]
