Evergreen and Ramparts
Ken Deardorf and Dugald StermerFew American magazines can claim to be agents of
change. Most, even the once ubiquitous Lifemagazine,
are reporters or chroniclers of their time and place.
Others like Vogue,Bazaar, and even Rolling Stonehave
supported, cultivated, and propagated fashions, styles,
and trends, but did not invent them. Most magazines
are lightning rods, not lightning.
Among a generation weaned on World War
II and raised on the sour milk of McCarthyism,
the late 1950 s and early 1960 s was a period of intense
cultural and political reevaluation. In the 1960 s the
new bohemians began to push the boundaries of
propriety through sexual and cultural expression in
two magazines.Rampartson the West Coast and
Evergreenon the East were the clarions of new
aesthetics, politics, and morality.Rampartswas the
voice of the political left and Evergreenwas the voice
of the cultural left. The former re-introduced
muckraking to American journalism, the latter
introduced banned authors’ controversial texts. The
former exposed CIA involvement in American
colleges and universities, the latter revealed the erotic
side of the American subculture.
In terms of design these were not 1960 s
versions of 1920 s constructivist, futurist, or dada
manifestoes—the more raucous underground
newspapers of the late 1960 s are a more accurate visual
analog. Yet in content these magazines were no less
radical than the political and cultural progressive journals of the 1920 s.
Rampartsand Evergreenconformed to appropriate design verities, with
legibility the most important. “I never wanted a magazine where the design
overpowered the content,” asserted Fred Jordan,Evergreen’s managing
editor from 1957 to 1971. Similarly, Dugald Stermer (b. 1936 ),Ramparts’s art
director from 1964 to 1970 , explained that a classical design format, rather
than an anarchic approach, “lent more credibility to what must have
seemed then like the hysterical paranoid ravings of loonies.” The signifi-106