Lettering by Jim Parkinson for Roger Black’s 10th Anniversary cover, Fred Woodard’s 20th, and Joe Hutchinson’s double-ought issue in 2010. Lettering for 1994 Generation Next cover was by Eric Siry.
The type of Rolling Stone
The type of Rolling Stone
TYPE’s first event brought together the designers and photo editors who made the visual side of this influential magazine—for 51 years. “The Art of Rolling Stone” conference in New York on May 25 was as much an emotional reunion as a conference.
At Rolling Stone, the most disposable medium that you could possibly imagine, a bi-weekly, newsprint publication, we were all designing for the ages, as if it were the Gutenberg Bible—no typographic detail too trivial. We would kern and space entire pages of text by hand(!). I learned that of design is something which can be timeless. —Christopher Austopchuk
IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO today. Well, more like 51. But Rolling Stone keeps on going with a diet of music and politics . . . and type. During last year’s 50th anniversary of the magazine, there was much to celebrate: Hunter Thompson and the writers. Annie Leibovitz and the photographers. But not much mention of the people behind the scenes―the art directors and the photo editors who put it all together visually. So TYPE assembled a group this May in New York to take a good look at The Art of Rolling Stone. Here are some of the stories told by the people who made the magazine.
The type of Rolling Stone
- The early days at Rolling Stone by John Williams and Lloyd Ziff
- Bringing history into the present by Vincent Winter
- We didn’t know it at the time, but this was a golden era by Mary Shanahan and Nancy Butkus
- Unbridled eclecticism by Fred Woodward
- Right font, right place, right time by Andy Cowles
- Like a Rolling Stone by Joe Hutchinson
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