Issue Twenty Six: Esq.
Today's collection is a batch of scans from various 1970s and 80s issues of Esquire Magazine. I was tipped off to the existence of this amazing archive of Esquire scans by Sasha Tochilovsky last fall, when I was working on the in-show editorial design for HBO Minx's eponymous magazine—alongside Pentagram's Emily Oberman and Laura Berglund—and we needed more authentic period references for seventies publication design.
I'm leaving for vacation in exactly four hours (any recommendations for Edinburgh?) so my commentary is a bit light today, but if you'd like to learn more about the history of Esquire's graphic design, this AIGA article covers the hits, including Milton Glaser's one year stint as creative director.
I'm personally drawn to the magazine's confident use of white space, bold, large-scale typography, and strong gridded elements, all of which feel somewhat novel compared to the visual density and overall complexity of much contemporary editorial design.
This issue's featured archive is The People's Design Archive, a crowd-sourced virtual archive that includes everything from finished projects to design process, photos, letters, oral histories, anecdotes, essays, and other supporting material about design and visual culture. The open source archive is working to expand the narrative of what makes up design history, and to make that material accessible to more people. I would highly encourage anyone and everyone to upload to their collection. (Fun fact: all images from Casual Archivist issues are also cross-posted to their archive for easy viewing!)
I gave a talk in Montreal last month at FORUM (a one day conference hosted by design studio Caserne) about the perils of moodboarding and the ways in which designers can instead look to archives and visual history to help inform their practice—you can watch it online here, along with all the other amazing talks from the event!