Blogs and Stories
The Magazine Whisperer
Fabien Baron has redesigned some of the most famous publications in the world, including Harper’s Bazaar and French Vogue. He talks to Jacob Bernstein about reinventing Andy Warhol’s Interview and doing a new book with Madonna.
Fabien Baron’s office on New York's Hudson Street is the cleanest thing you’ve ever seen. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall in the waiting room and a couple of loveseats to sit on, but everything is white. The walls are white. The seats are white. The coffee table is white. It’s almost like a doctor’s office, except that the man who works here with his staff of 35 doesn’t diagnose illnesses: He cures design problems.
Click Image Below to View Our Gallery of Fabien Baron's Work
Baron’s Interview is a product that looks and feels less like a magazine than a coffee table book, which is exactly what the designer, 50, was going for. “You have to offer something that feels produced, because that’s what you cannot have on Internet,” Baron says in his trademark patois, dropping the “the” before Internet. “You have to reinforce all the good things magazines are there for and eliminate everything else.” Consequently, he’s upped the trim size of the magazine (it is now comparable to V and W), cleaned up the design, and filled Interview with pages and pages of impeccably styled fashion photographs (and very expensive clothes).
Still, for an art director whose design aesthetic is pristine, his early months at the magazine were rather messy. Shortly after he was hired, Baron (and the magazine’s fashion director, Karl Templer) quit after clashing with Interview’s co-editorial director Glenn O’Brien. Soon after that, O’Brien left and Baron was brought back.
Certainly the most recent issue, a 40th-anniversary special with Kristen Stewart on the cover, doesn’t indicate a magazine in turmoil. It carried almost 100 pages of ads and virtually every top-tier fashion brand signed on, including Louis Vuitton, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Prada.
But hurdles remain. According to Baron, the biggest two are budget constraints and getting photographers to shoot in an era when nearly every top talent is under contract with Condé Nast. “Even the photographers who aren’t locked up have been locked up,” he says. “People are worried that if they work for us, they’re not going to work for Vogue. (Or W, the other Condé Nast fashion magazine that Interview seems most clearly to be taking a run at.)
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Live from Victoria's Secret
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Levi Johnston Gets a Porn Award
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Baron forgets that words are a potent form of communication.
Glenn O'Brien could write and write well which is the thing great magazines are made of - not white spaces.
You said it! For a year or so Interview was headed back to importance. Now its headed back to impotence. What a waste.
Doesn't it seem to be a little odd that you would set out to re-create a magazine (particularly one called Interview) and be so driven by the sense of the atheistic that you make the font size so small that it can't be read. Talk about form over function? What's the demographic here? The well healed, fashion conscious consumer with extraordinarily good eyesight. Isn't that a little like redesigning a car with square wheels because those tired old round ones have been just so done? I must be a philistine but I'll never understand the creative mind.
For what it worth Interview is the only magazine Im buying at the moment, as for small type.? sorry it looks fine to me.! what annoys me intensly is people being negative about great talent.! if you don't get great design its all here in interview, stick with it and you'll find this is what print should be doing more of.! making people talk, making print sexy again, when i saw Barons redesign i was so happy that there WAS a magazine i could look forward to buying again, Go Son.
Interview was never meant to be a copy of V. Perhaps he should have started a new magazine for people who love fashion and design but don't read? At least there wouldn't be any subscribers left disappointed. The magazine used to surprise and inspire...alas, no more.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.