Check out the video of Wired magazine’s Creative Director, Scott Dadich, shedding some insight into how they come up with their iconic cover images from FORA.tv.
Like many a geek out there, Wired is my favorite magazine. In fact, it is the only non-”old house” magazine that has been allowed into the short-stack we keep on our coffee table. As a wanna-be science geek, Wired stole my heart years ago with it’s pithy commentary and insightful articles on everything from pop culture to cutting edge advancements in gene splicing. The one thing that has cemented this publication’s place on my bookshelf is it’s design.
With it’s eye catching covers, graphs that actually look cool, well laid out articles, and illustrations from top artists in the industry, the attention to detail that the design team at Wired magazine puts into each issue constantly inspires me in my own design work. I usually have a year’s worth of back issues on my shelf at any given time, and every couple of months I skim through my stack with a pair of scissors cutting out pages to add to my inspiration file. Sometimes it’s just an illustration, or a headline, other times it will be an entire article. It never fails that something in an issue will grab my attention.
For instance, while I was working my way through this month’s issue—17.10, Dangerous Ideas Ahead—I had to stop while reading the article Netflix Everywhere: Sorry Cable, You’re History when I noticed their use of irregular column widths in the layout. Now I don’t know if this is something that most people would notice—and if they did, would care about. But I had to sit there for few minutes analyzing this unconventional layout trying to decide a) what’s the point, b) how can I do this myself. As it turned out, I decided that it did make the article a little easier to read, and I have got to find a way to do that myself.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of publications out there who try to stay on the bleeding edge of design—especially in high-end fashion mags—but I have never seen one that does it so consistently well, and with the reader’s best interest in mind as Wired. This is the one thing that keeps me subscribing to the magazine as apposed to reading it all online.