When Shem Law was appointed design director / deputy editor of Radio Times in 2001, it was a bit like coming home. He'd grown up with the title, quite literally, with both of his parents having contributed illustrations to the magazine during the 1960s. "It put me through school", he jokes. But there's nothing sentimental today about his approach to editorial design, a discipline in which he has worked almost his entire career.
Take two years ago, when Radio Times picked up the Periodical Publishers Association award for Best UK Magazine Cover Ever, beating off stiff competition from titles including The Face, Nova, Oz, Vogue and Vanity Fair with a Dr Who-themed election week special featuring a dalek crossing Westminster Bridge at night and the cover line: Vote Dalek! The win prompted a certain degree of backbiting on online message boards and discussion forums that persuaded Law to leap to the magazine's defence online.
Design imperatives
"There can be a certain snobbishness about design in magazines," he admits. "But designers - who design wine labels and packaging and so on - and editorial designers are very separate beings." Editorial designers have to be journalists first, designers second - people who understand the best way to tell stories with both words and pictures.
"When I was at art school, everyone thought Neville Brody was God. But while there's no denying he's great at typography, that was his strength - not pictures," he adds: "To be a great editorial designer, you've got to be great at both. Which is why I get frustrated by magazines which are just vehicles for graphic design that, when you try to actually read them, are hopeless when it comes to navigating stories."
The starting point must always be what the magazine is for. "At the start of my career, everyone in magazine design was very excited about Italian Vogue. By the late eighties and early nineties, US magazine design was where it was at. At the moment, there's a lot of interesting work being done in Australia - Donna Hay Magazine stands out," Law says.
"But one magazine that consistently knocks me out is Look because of its ideas, its intention and its presentation - all are done very well and consistently so. Andy Cowles at IPC has a fantastic understanding of what makes his magazines sell. They're brash, they're bright, and they do the job."
The message is clear: in Law's rule book, content and ideas must always come first. And it is this philosophy that underpins Radio Times' approach to design that resulted not just in the Vote Dalek! cover but (another of Law's favourites) - a 2006 re-creation of Arthur William Devis' famous painting ‘The Death of Nelson’ featuring the death of Coronation Street character Mike Baldwin. A copy of the Radio Times cover was even temporarily displayed by the Royal Maritime Museum alongside the original painting.
It was quite a coup as Radio Times doesn't often run soap-themed front covers and the death of a middle-aged man is not exactly a sure-fire bet for shifting extra copies on the newsstand. But the tactic worked, generating significant publicity.
"It was a bit of fun, a silly idea, but it was executed well and the next thing we knew it was on the front page of the Sun," Law smiles. "There are people who look down on this kind of thing, but this is editorial design at its best that's perfectly in tune with its market."
Law's journalistic instincts were honed in newspapers during a career in publishing which, he readily admits, has been "charmed". He started out in Fleet Street - to which he was introduced at an early age by his father, the artist Roger Law who went on to co-create Spitting Image with Peter Fluck - when, following a brief stint as an apprentice sign writer, Law Jnr was taken on by the Observer Magazine as deputy art director.
The Observer led to subsequent positions at the Daily Mail Saturday magazine; the Sunday Herald Magazine in Melbourne; women's magazines - Mirabella in London, then Allure and Seventeen in New York – and, finally, a five year stint at Express Newspapers before he joined Radio Times almost a decade ago as the magazine was reeling from a less than successful re-design.
Freedom of expression
"It had just been overhauled by a design consultancy but as a result it had lost its soul," he explains. "Design agencies have a tendency to pre-determine every aspect of design from the point size of headlines down to how big a picture should be, but you just can't do that in the editorial design world."
With a large staff eager to get the title back on track, it didn't take long to consign the formulaic 'style bible' to the bottom drawer. In its place, Law says, he has tried to foster an environment in which any one of the magazine's large team can put forward a design idea and follow it through.
"We are lucky to have a big art department here. But the thing about great ideas is that anyone can have them," he claims. "Some magazines have structured hierarchies. I like everyone to feel they have a say and can contribute to the next cover idea."
Launched in 1923 and published by BBC Worldwide, Radio Times is one of the country's oldest and biggest magazine brands. Its Christmas 2009 two-week special edition generated blockbuster combined advertising and sales revenue of almost £7m.
Small wonder, then, that Law believes he has the best art directing job in the UK. But it's not all plain sailing. The 87 year-old title still has to work hard to maintain its position in the fiercely competitive TV listings market.
In the first half of 2009, Radio Times' weekly circulation dipped below 1m for the first time. The magazine recorded a 4.3% year-on-year circulation drop to 966,098 for the six months to June 30 2009, ABC figures show, and today it is the country's third largest paid-for UK TV listings title (behind IPC Media's What's on TV and Bauer's TV Choice).
"From a design point of view, we have a fantastic pool of content and talent to draw on," Law says. "From a market point of view, meanwhile, there's more choice for TV viewers than ever, which means they need more than ever an authoritative guide to help navigate this huge TV landscape."
A significant part of his time is spent overseeing and evolving the design of the magazine's comprehensive listings pages which never stand still because people's viewing habits are constantly evolving, he explains. Another focus, meanwhile, is the evolution of the title across other platforms.
The digital dimension
Radio Times has a successful website, for example, and it is now developing a range of smart phone applications. Law says he has great hopes for Apple’s new iPad which, given the behavioural change in consumers already driven by the widespread uptake of the iTunes paid-for content model, could open the door fully for paid-for print-based editorial and information content.
The further digitisation of the editorial design role is, of course, a highly topical issue - and one that Law admits troubles him. "Without doubt there will be fewer magazines in the future. But many - the stronger titles - will survive and tomorrow's editorial design will depend on presenting content on digital platforms in an engaging and compelling way," he says.
The greatest challenge, however, lies in delivering on that. "I have four daughters who, in effect, publish themselves when they go out for the night recording the evening on digital cameras and then, afterwards, using Skype and social to share their experiences with friends. It's a form of publishing and it's all about them. The central issue for all of us moving forward is understanding why they would be interested in any of the content we choose to push out."
Valuing photography
As troubling is the role design will play in this brave new digital world. "The problem I have with it all is that the digital world is yet to take seriously the value of good photography and the need to pay for it - there's still a tendency to rely on stock shots when the important thing is always to be knocked out by visual images, irrespective of whether they are moving or still," he adds.
It's an important issue Law believes younger editorial designers moving into the business today must engage with. "Someone will have to come up with a way of properly translating the whole package of content you get today in print for digital," he says. "It will cost because good content costs, but it will have to be done as, in the recession, many people have been cutting corners and this is now beginning to show."
The next generation of editorial designers must also recognise that technological competence - or even design skill - alone does not guarantee success. With the role of the editorial designer fast becoming a cross-platform one, digital design and production skills are of course key, but there is, it seems, a risk in over-relying on the computer.
"I still design in my head first, which is not the case nowadays with younger designers. The key (to great editorial design), however, is to come up with the idea first then use the computer as a tool," he says.
"When I trained, no one taught magazine design at art school - I learned all I know from John Tennant (when he was at the Sunday Times Magazine) and he from Michael Rand. Today there are numerous courses and many competent graduates. But, ultimately, what makes the difference is having a journalistic brain."
