W,Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, spiced with a dash of People. Its gossipy tone
appealed to culture vultures, those maturated groupies who thrived on
avant-gardism.Interviewbecame a safe haven for the Jekylls and Hydes of
society called Yuppies, who were squeaky clean by day and down and dirty
at night.Interview’s interior is minimally designed, like a hip New York
Review of Books, to allow for maximum photographic impact, and so as not
to compete with its advertising. Nevertheless, it has influenced the
appearance of many subsequent culture tabs.
By the late 1970 s, boomers born in the late 1950 s and early 1960 s
were clamoring for their own cultural voices. On the West Coast, punk was
the predominant attitude and style. Its proponents in Los Angeles spawned
a neo-underground tabloid called Slash, a raucous blend of type, image,
and neo-underground comix (cartoonist Gary Panter was the leading
practitioner), and perfected what has been called the “ransom note” style
of cut-and-paste design (somewhat related to futurist experiments in the
teens). In San Francisco, a bizarre publishing diversion,Wet: The Magazine
of Gourmet Bathing, ingeniously wed the 1970 s sexual preoccupation with
fashion-conscious nihilism cut, of course, with tongue-in-check, ribald wit.
We t’s art director practiced an ad hoc, gridless approach to layout (at least
for the first year, after which We tchanged design and editorial format and
dropped bathing from its title).We tsignaled a post-underground obsession
with esoterica.
On the East Coast,Fetish, a similarly arcane culture tab, was
published and designed by David Sterling and Jane Kosstrin. But Fetish
was a linchpin of sorts. Its content was not sex or drug oriented, but was a
somewhat rarefied exploration of “the man/object matrix in contemporary
culture” (translation: articles on art, architecture, and design against an
avant-garde backdrop). Although its design was once described as a
marriage of underground and Condé Nast fashion-magazine sensibilities, it
made a purposeful departure from ad hoc gridless design, to a controlled,
yet playful, anarchy (or “new wave” design). Also on the East Coast, new
wave/ punk music and its offshoots gave rise to tabloids like the New York
Rockerand the East Village Eye(apparently a reference to the East Village
Other’s eye logo). Both had a random and skewed approach to layout that
resembled their underground forerunners, but without the naïve integrity.
Although it seemed that the underground aesthetic was not
entirely dead and the torch had only changed hands, the truth was that
alternative culture had changed. Politics was no longer operative, rather
interest in material culture was dominant. The antiestablishmentism, so
naively practiced by the underground, was codified by a new group of
design-literate practitioners. Outrageousness became an end in itself,
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1