magazines

Less than a month stands between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s three-day celebration, “Modern Beyond Expectations,” takes place June 22-24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where Dwell has taken an additional 60,000 square feet of exhibition space. Among the highlights in store for the event’s seventh go-round are an exhibition of the best in Swiss design, an original installation by Oyler Wu Collaborative, and a screening lounge that will show films such as Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island and Hella Jongerius: Contemporary Archetypes. Featured speakers include Miami architect Chad Oppenheim, who will discuss the life-enhancing power of houses, and prefab innovator Mitchell Joachim of ONE Lab. The Brooklyn-based architect and TED fellow will speak about cities and how we think about all kinds of urban scale simultaneously. “Cities are always shifting and their smallest components can have the greatest implications,” says Joachim. “I call it ‘from the doorknob to the democracy.’”

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Are you simultaneously comforted and excited by the sight of a bookshelf groaning with goldenrod-spined periodicals? Does your love of explorers and safaris transcend web browsers? Do you aspire to deploy your visual skills to inspire others to care about the planet? Then explore this: National Geographic is searching Earth for a visual communications coordinator to join its Washington, D.C. office, which we imagine as a rectangular golden structure teeming with exotic creatures (blind snakes, mutant penguins, Chris Johns). The full-time post involves “researching and writing intranet stories, producing and editing internal video, event management, and photographing internal events.” Our interview advice? Bone up on your baby animal terminology and try not to flinch when they bring in the giant sea beast.

Learn more about and apply for this National Geographic visual communications coordinator job or view all of the current mediabistro.com design, art, and photo jobs.

It’s shaping up to be a spot-on summer. Dot-loving artist Yayoi Kusama is the subject of a retrospective on view through June 5 at Tate Modern. The show arrives stateside, at the Whitney Museum, on July 12, just days before Louis Vuitton debuts a collection of ready-to-wear printed with two Kusama patterns. Vuitton stores around the world will be filled with displays of red and white spotted tentacles created by the artist, who recently celebrated her eighty-third birthday. Wallpaper* is right on the dot with this cover of its June issue, on newsstands today (subscribers received the limited-edition Kusuma cover, which is otherwise available only at newsstands in Japan). The photo shows Kusama at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, where she stands with one of her favorite works, “With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever” (2011), a trio of dot-covered tulip sculptures. The artist has personalized the cover with a “message of love” to Wallpaper* readers along with her Gustonian doodles.

Impossibly dapper Jim Nelson once again left New York’s Marriott Marquis clutching an elephant—the coveted yet unwieldy Alexander Calder stabile pachyderm that signifies a win in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards. The GQ editor-in-chief picked up his publication’s second consecutive Ellie for excellence in magazine design, triumphing over a finalist field that consisted of born-again Bloomberg Businessweek (which nabbed a general excellence award), Fabien Baron-ified Interview, New York, and always-on-its-game Wired. We’ll have to wait until Friday to see if GQ‘s double-header will extend to the Society of Publication Designers’ “Magazine of the Year” award. Meanwhile, back at the Ellies, Vogue was honored for overall excellence in magazine photography, although its spooky Steven Klein-lensed “Lady Be Good” portfolio, singled out as a finalist for best feature photography, was bested by those “Vamps, Crooks, and Killers” at The New York Times Magazine. Harper’s won for news and documentary photography with “Juvenile Injustice,” a photo essay by Richard Ross. Other victories of note: TIME was named magazine of the year, Newell Turner‘s freshened-up House Beautiful took home the Elllie for best lifestyle magazine, and the work of the late Christopher Hitchens earned Vanity Fair the award for columns and commentary.

“Before microphones and television were invented, a leader had to stand in front of a crowd and bellow,” notes Rick Stengel, managing editor of TIME. “Now [one] can tweet a phrase that reaches millions in a flash. Influence was never ­easier—or more ephemeral.” Which makes the task of selecting TIME‘s list of the 100 most influential people in the world all the trickier. This year’s list, announced today and on newsstands tomorrow in the magazine’s April 30 issue, includes those who have wielded influence through fashion design (Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen), exquisite gadgets (Apple CEO Tim Cook), political cartoons (Ali Ferzat), Nordic cuisine (René Redzepi of Noma), and spandex underthings (Spanx founder Sara Blakely).

Then there’s the influencer who is lauded for his way with time itself: Christian Marclay, creator of the 24-hour cinematic odyssey known as “The Clock.” Geoff Dyer was up to the task of composing a concise yet evocative summary of the video piece, which he describes as stemming from an idea “audacious in its simplicity and herculean in execution.” As for the writer’s own experience of the work—well, it’s something of a chrono-cautionary tale. “During the film’s opening run in London, I had intended to stay long enough to get the gag—10 minutes?—before hurrying on to a lunch date,” writes Dyer. “It was so hypnotic, so thrilling, that I ended up watching 20 hours over a month, arranging life and appointments (for which I was invariably late) in such a way as to catch previously unseen segments of that celluloid epic called a day.”

“I think I just do what I feel is good to do. Everybody can give me their suggestions, but at the end, the final risk is mine because it’s my name on the magazine. So I only do what I really feel. Everybody tries to influence you, of course: ‘Oh, this is the right moment to do this’ and ‘This is the right photographer to choose,’ and ‘This is the right model to have…’ I listen, but I must go my own way. When you take risks, it means that you know every month people are there to judge you. Some months are good; some months are bad. When you make a mistake, they call you immediately. And when you do something good, they send flowers to the stylist. So this is a way to say that I want to do it myself. I don’t care if you like it or not. I do the magazine that I think is correct. If you like this issue, I am more than happy. If you don’t like this issue, you will like the next because we do 14 issues a year. So once in a year you will love, no?”

-Franca Sozzani, editor-in-chief or Vogue Italia and editorial director of Condé Nast Italy, in an Interview interview with Livia Firth. On May 4, Sozzani will be in New York to discuss her career (and, if history is any guide, a lot more) at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Register here to attend the free event.

Fellow periodical fiends, take note: the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has announced the finalists for the 2012 National Magazine Awards. Vice and the visual crack that is the overhauled Bloomberg Businessweek are up against the big boys (The New Yorker, New York, and GQ) for general excellence in the general interest category (how general!), and we’re pleased to see Aperture and House Beautiful also in the general excellence hunt, in the “thought-leader” and lifestyle categories, respectively. Below are the nominees in the design and photo categories, including nods for the Fabien Baron-helmed Interview and Steven Klein‘s Vogue portfolio of a hauntingly retro-chic Amber Valletta and son. Notably absent from the photography fimalists is Martha Stewart Living, which has frequently made the cut in years past. We’ve denoted 2011 winners (if re-nominated in that category) with an asterisk. The winners will be announced and receive their elephantine Alexander Calder-designed statuettes on May 3 in New York City.
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A good art director must be equally adept at sprinting for the finish line and going the distance, so what better place to showcase your design and typography chops than at Runner’s World? The Rodale-owned magazine is looking to optimize its performance by hiring an assistant art director for its Emmaus, Pennsylvania offices. Among the position’s many responsibilities is “assisting on production for photo shoots,” so if you run things right, you may never again want for moisture-wicking, polyester/spandex blend underthings. Our advice? Be sure that you tie your shoes correctly before going in for an interview.

Learn more about and apply for this assistant art director, Runner’s World job or view all of the current mediabistro.com design/art/photo jobs.

“The first [poster for his cinema StudioFilmClub project in Port of Spain, Trinidad] I did was for Black Orpheus, actually, a few films in. I had started a painting, a study that I had kind of abandoned, of a black man in a boat. It was from this Duane Allman record cover, An Anthology—this image from the gatefold sleeve, with eight figures in a boat. One of them was the drummer, Jaimoe [Johanson], the only black guy in the band, and I started this painting of him, just Jaimoe, floating in a boat. I abandoned it. But then I was thinking about posting a poster for the film on the notice board here—this was when the space was the Caribbean Contemporary Arts Center; lots of artists were working here. It felt important to do something in the building, to have a weekly thing. And the film was Black Orpheus; I already had this figure in the boat seeing himself in the water. It was like Cocteau’s use of reflection to suggest entry into the underworld. So I just painted on it TONITE, BLACK ORPHEUS, STUDIO FILM CLUB and put it up. That was the first poster.

I love [hand-painted signage]. But I think it’s dying, all over the world; the technology has become so cheap. Five years ago it was cheaper to pay a guy to spend ten hours in the hot sun, painting a Stag bottle on a wall as advertising: now you can just print one up. It’s tragic—but I think it’s happened all over: in India, Africa. You see these large plastic signs going up where you once saw hand-painted ones. But when I came back to Trinidad, one of the things I was so attracted to here were these signs on the street. Often the wording was quite abstract to the outsider—NO DRAWER, BLACK AND WHITE, SOCA EXPRESS. These signs just punctuated by words. And words you can see from a distance, words in color. And with this language, too—I loved it.”

-Peter Doig, interviewed by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro in the March-April issue of The Believer

The end of an era is at hand. Yesterday it was announced the New Yorker‘s longtime architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, will be leaving the magazine he’s called home for the past 15 years for greener, more ad-heavy pastures, to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. The two magazines are, of course, both owned by Conde Nast, meaning the move isn’t a tremendous hike, and Goldberger has a history with VF, having contributed pieces here and there over the years. Still, it’s something of a major in-house coup, which the Observer has plenty of juicy details on, including that the critic hadn’t been getting along with New Yorker editor David Remnick, who he claims made getting stories into the magazine much more difficult, and that his decision to leave was in part related to a biography of Frank Gehry he’s in the middle of working on. On the Vanity Fair side, here’s what the magazine’s triumphant editor Graydon Carter had to say:

“This is an appointment that thrills me profoundly,” Carter said. “Paul is about as gifted a commentator on architecture, urban planning, and design as anyone you’re going to find these days—in other words, he’s just a brilliant writer.”