Adam Moss: ‘Sales Don’t Matter’ When Choosing Cover

In Tuesday night’s SPD @ FIT panel titled New York Magazine at 40, which focused the publication’s cover designs throughout the years, editor-in-chief Adam Moss opined that “sales don’t matter” when picking his magazine covers. “Sales fluctuate within a tiny little margin,” the EIC said. “It represents under five percent of the readership. It’s very much a subscription magazine.” He did remark that since sales were a hard number, it was easy to get competitive about how well different covers sold, but thought that a cover should ultimately be chosen by the “heat” it would generate and the “clarity” with which it told the story.

Some amusing anecdotes about New York and contrarian wisdom about designing a great magazine from Moss and the other members of the panel — New York‘s co-founder Milton Glaser, former art directors Walter Bernard and Robert Newman, and its current design director Chris Dixon — after the jump.

On the magazine’s beginnings: The building that first housed New York had “no heat for about six years,” Bernard said, blaming Glaser who was the landlord.

On the origins of the groundbreaking design: “We didn’t really feel we had an elegant magazine, nor did we ever have an elegant magazine… I’m always amazed that people think it was well designed because we didn’t think we were designing anything. We were just putting it together so we could get it out the door.” (Glazer)

On being low budget: “The myth about New York magazine is that they have a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of resources. The fact is that it’s really a low budget operation. In fact, if anyone ever worked in the 2nd Avenue office, it was such a nightmare. When Kurt Andersen hired me, he wouldn’t take me into the [design studio].” (Newman)

On Esquire‘s E Ink cover: “I haven’t seen it… It’s an inspired novelty.”(Moss)

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