Legendary Magazine Designer George Lois’s Last Round

George Lois talks with the cadence and manner of a guy who's spent years around boxing gyms and maybe the track. Though, most of his fights have been in editorial bullpens and most of his bets have been on creative long shots. And they've paid off. He's a recognized legend in the design and ad worlds, and 38 of his iconic Esquire covers reside in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He has, of course, little love for the standard magazine design by committee, which he calls a "group-fucking-grope" in his typical fashion, and his speech comes out in sputters and stops when he's worked up, which is often. We had the chance to witness this firsthand, on this, the occasion of the umpteenth homage to his Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian cover (above; this time it was Ricky Gervais as Ali as Saint Sebastian on the cover of British Esquire) and at the end of a year where magazines appear to be on the ropes. It makes sense that some of his most well-known images are of boxers, because for all the accolades and decades of success, George Lois sounds every bit the old ringside corner man, vigorously pep talking his over-the-hill fighter (in this case, print) into pulling off one last astounding late-round K.O, as told to John Capone.

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“Magazine design is almost an oxymoron with most magazines today. It goes for even a great magazine like Vanity Fair. If you get even one inch of white space to breath you’re lucky. Everybody’s just packing in the information. Most magazines you pick up — you choke to death.

“They say, ‘People buy magazines to read, for information.’ Well, you buy a magazine not only for that but so you can have exciting visual experiences. They try to jam words and pictures on every square-inch of the page like they’re working on a Web site.

“Look at Vogue. Oh my God. Vogue and Harper’s once were very well designed magazines. I mean they were exciting to look at. You could not give a shit about fashion and be excited by the whole look of the magazine. You look at Vogue now: it’s not even designed. What a difference. You pick up a Vogue back in the days of [Condé Nast’s Alexander] Lieberman and those guys, and you look at it now, and it’s a disgrace.

“Very few magazines do you look through — and I’m not talking as a designer, I’m talking as a normal person — do you look through something and you open a spread and it takes your breath away a little bit. Vogue will do their normal full page photograph of fashion, but when they get into any kind of a story it’s like jam, jam, jam, jam. I’m just kind of suffocated when I look through them.

“Even a great magazine like Esquire — excuse me, not Esquire, they suck today — a magazine like Vanity Fair, which every month I have to read, but I don’t read it for a visual experience. That visceral feeling — most people don’t even attempt to try.

“I was at Grayden Carter’s office once, looking at his stuff on the wall, the designers had some spreads up there and they’re pretty nice looking, and I’m kibitzing, saying things like, ‘Gee, maybe you do that or do that,’ and they’re all excited saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. That’s terrific.’ Then Grayden comes along, and we’re looking at the stuff on the wall and he starts telling them, ‘Put stuff in it. C’mon, what’re you doing?’

“It’s almost a non-visual attitude. It is kind of is a reproduction of Internet pages. Every corner is filled with something.

“Forget the white space. I could easily tell people today, ‘You know what you gotta do with this magazine? Get some fucking white space into it.’ But that white space doesn’t make something an exciting picture. But to be able to design a spread and do it your way, and make it dramatic and effective. It could be jammed with photography or with the image, but it acts as a surprise. A punch in the mouth. But I just don’t see that happening.

“At the same the same time, you can look through the SPD [The Society of Publications Designers] book and it’s pretty good. So maybe something good is going on, maybe there are some people who know how to do it. I can’t believe there aren’t some young George Loises out there somewhere. Go get ‘em. And give them the freedom.

“But you got editors and publishers that are just saying ‘Fill the fucking page up with stuff.’ It’s as simple as that. I mean, I heard Graydon Carter saying, ‘People are paying five bucks; get some stuff in there.’

“I saw this happening as an effect of the Internet, by the fact that you’ve got information all over the place. And people think you’ve got to have as much information in the magazine as when you go to the Internet. It can’t happen. That’s not the name of the game anyway.