Sign of the times

Cover by Eric Fraser from 1938

There was a golden era of Radio Times magazine; it was intelligent,creative, informative and entertaining. From its inception in 1923 the Radio Times had always been synonymous with an imaginative use of illustration. From those early days it embraced the talents of some of the finest from McKnight Kauffer to Edward Ardizzone and Abram Games to Robin Jacques. But that was back in the more innocent days of black and white when letterpress printing and a mean spirited maximum dot screen of only 65 dpi was the order of the day, so line drawing was the key vehicle for illustration. Illustrators at that time positively excelled in the limitation and squeezed the maximum out of it. Here are a few examples from a diverse range of illustrators that graced the pages of Radio Times from the 1940s to the 1960s…

Edward Ardizzone

Ronald Searle

Eric Fraser

R.F.Micklewright

James Boswell 1967

Radio Times paid a lot of attention to the quality of its editors and art directors, in order to uphold the high BBC Rithian ethos. By the late sixties, Radio Times had become a little stale and dated. With the competion of TV Times it was ready for a major change, but without losing its unique integrity and 3 million weekly readers. Radio Times turned to an external duo of Editorial Designer David Driver and Editor Geoffrey Cannon. They where given the secret task of transforming the Radio Times from cover to cover. And they did just that.

Illustration by Charles Raymond of The Joy of Sex fame
 

Prior to Radio Times, Driver art directed a number of magazines, including the now forgotten in flight publication Welcome Aboard. Much of Welcome Aboard’s visual innovation that Driver was experimenting with was developed and surpassed on Radio Times. Originally Cannon’s intention was to change the name to the acronym, RT (which alluded to Radio and Television rather than the emphasis on radio). This idea went a long way down the line with Driver creating and elegant masthead using stylish swash caps. But it was a step too far for the BBC and the long established name was retained. Driver hired designers Robert Priest and Derek Ungless, both highly talented individuals in their own right (they later went on to work independently in New York to great success). This tight knit team creatively pushed the magazine. Their choice of photography, illustration and copywriting was exceptional and it became the showcase for many of Britain’s most talented creatives. 

In 1976, Radio Times received the ultimate design accolade, a D&AD Gold Award for ‘consistently raising the standard of editorial design.’ Here are some examples of that award winning work..

By Peter Brookes

By Frank Bellamy the illustrator of the Eagle's Dan Dare

 
By Brian Grimwood

By Paul Slater 

By Tony Meeuwissen

By Ralph Steadman

By Adrian George

And 4 by the most prolific  and conceptual of the illustrator for Radio Times, Peter Brookes

Peter Brookes was also responsible for many mono pieces and diagrams (along with Nigel Holmes) that appeared within the magazine...

It is both sad and depressing that following the departure of Driver in 1981, Radio Times disintegrated in design and editorial quality. Now 30 years on it would be an understatement to call the current Radio Times a design embarrassment. It looks and reports like so many other listings magazines spewed out onto the newsstands. 21st Century’s Radio Times has no distinguishing features and is packed to the gunnels with so much graphic furniture that it plays havoc with the eyeballs.

There is little (well, actually nothing) to commend this dull, dull approach

21st century TV listings display. All me too. No I'm special.

It is clear that today’s Radio Times has no room for design innovation. No uncluttered surprising covers. No inventive use of informative diagrams. No groundbreaking illustration. No typographical integrity. It simply mirrors our over hyped culture with its obsession with celebrity and trivia. It is dumber than dumb. The hard work of all those earlier Radio Times stalwarts to bring its readers creative originality has been completely swept away.

The heyday of  British editorial design when Pearce Marchbank was at Time Out, Michael Rand and David King at The Sunday Times Colour Magazine, David Hillman at Nova and Janette Collins at The Times, all producing remarkable work has long gone. Commercial magazines these days have to fill their covers with a myriad of eye catching headlines, obliterating the photographs, which in themselves, are just procession of personality portraits, retouched to cosmetic perfection. All vacuous and instantly forgettable. We get what we deserve I guess.

Ironically Esquire - the very magazine that trail blazed strong, ideas based covers like this… 

Designed by George Lois 1965

which in turn influenced many British art directors, recently celebrated their original creator, George Lois… with an exhibition of his ground breaking work.

Lois with one of his most famous covers

But today Esquire covers look like this…

So much for feminism

But if you happen to be a subscriber, they are presented type free… How much better they look.

Well, may be not.

So what of the key players in those golden days of Radio Times? Art Director David Driver went on the become Design Director of The Times where he has remained, along with one time regular illustrator for Radio Times, Peter Brookes, who became, and still is, The Times main political cartoonist of great merit.

Sadly the tabloid incarnation of The Times is, in my view, disappointing and pales when compared to Driver’s earlier years at the design helm of the paper when it was still an unruly broadsheet. Generally the change in size has compromised the design standard. And the switch over to a newly designed typeface in 2006 made things worse, losing its one unique typographic identifier, Stanley Morrison’s Times New Roman. The only British newspaper left that towers head and shoulders above the rest in design quality is The Guardian - a paper whose original design I lamented passing, but I have to say, in its new guise has gone from strength to strength.

Robert Priest took up residence in New York where he art directed a number of key magazines including Esquire. These days he heads up Priest + Grace, a specialists editorial design consultancy. Derek Ungless also departed to New York where he art directed Rolling Stone, New York and Vogue among others. Today he is still a major figure on the NY creative scene as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of DSW, Inc. where he is reported to receive an eye watering $6 million pay packet (who needs bankers). And the old RT Editor, Geoffrey Cannon is now a writer, speaker, editor, executive and campaigner in the field of food, nutrition and world health. He is co-author of Dieting Makes You Fat and The Food Scandal. Sadly they have terrible covers. Why didn’t he call in Driver?

Comments

[David marshall]

Interesting thoughts, and there certainly has been a decline in the quality of design and art direction — UK Esquire's most recent redesign (May/june 2011) being particularly disappointing. However, the garish Esquire examples shown are the US version, whereas the George Lois edition and the minimal 'subscriber only' version are both the (now old) UK version — which was actually very well designed. Even with the standard page furniture adorning the cover, the UK and US versions are, as one would expect, very different beasts in terms of design and editorial.

[Shem Law]

Yes, Mike things were much better in the past. In fact I can't personally think of a single improvement in life since 1976. But be that as it may, you are rather misguided in your demolition of the current art direction standards of Radio Times. I am the Art Director of Radio Times. I am nearly 50 years old, when I was a child both my parents Roger Law, Deirdre Amsden, my aunt Candy Amsden and most of my parents friends were illustrators who contributed to Radio Times. It kept me in short trousers. I as a child spent a great deal of my time in the art department of the Sunday Times magazine. I was taught magazine design by John Tennant, when I started at the Observer Colour supplement in 1985, he had been taught by Michael Rand and I know the three Davids, Hillman, Driver and King personally. George Lois is a hero and inspiration to me. I have been at Radio Times for 11 years so I know the history, myths and legends better than perhaps even you Mike. And i would love to have art directed Radio times in it's pomp. But I turned up in the world of publishing when things were changing. Hot metal was practically dead, the three pint lunch hour had reached last orders. I know how much fun it must have been, because i caught the tail end of it, I know work far harder than when I started (Harder than i did 2 years ago even). As a designer i am a typesetter, doc printer, photo retoucher and every other trade that has disappeared in our industry. It is now run by accountants and we live and die by circulation reports. I still commission good illustrators and have had several 'drawn' covers in my time here...But it's not the same, as you point out, but nowhere is the same any more i work in a slowly dying industry... and we do our best to produce striking, thought provoking covers, which is more than most people do in this business. So by all means be wistful and nostalgic, but then grow the fuck up and join the real world where we at the 'coalface' actually have to toil and try in our own small way to uphold the shining example of our elders and betters from a different time.
Shem Law
Art Director,
Radio times

[Shem Law]

Oh and while I'm on the subject, Mike, did you have anything to do with the appalling CDT redesign of RT in the '90's? That truly was shocking, bland and dreadful...

[mike]

Hello Shem – Well, what can I say? I seem to have hit a nerve. Look, the fact of the matter is we now live in a horrid celebrity, account driven world. Nothing you have said in your repose to my view about the 21st century Radio Times has change my view. The fact is it was once an intelligent, informative, surprising and highly creative publication. It hasn’t been for two decades. I was highlighting a sadly missed past, when readers where still treated with a modicum of intelligence and respect. As you say circulation figures are your masters these days, that and the sheer amount of channels you have to include in the magazine, very little elbowroom. But I have to say you don’t sound like a very happy man. Where you work and what you do is key to your well-being. Given you situation I would leave. Easier done than said I know. Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow. And re your question about CDT and their late 90s redesign of Radio Times. I was not involved at all.

[Kellie Strøm]

I wonder why it seems hard to imagine the current Radio Times regularly featuring illustrated covers. They're still not so unusual for current affairs and business magazines - Time or The Economist for example. I suspect there's a reinforcing of expectation at work. Also of course once the magazine falls out of the habit of using illustrated covers, there is the fear of potential pitfalls in trying the now unfamiliar route.

[mike]

Hello Kellie - In fact Radio Times, during the period that I have written about, also had brilliant photographic covers. At some point I will feature some as David Driver managed a teriffic balance bettween illustration and photography.

[David Driver]

Dear Mike,

this is proving to be an excellent dialogue. Your contribution is as powerful as it has always been.

Kindest regards, David D

[Mike Dempsey]

Hello David - It certainly is. I hate to sound like a grumpy old man praising all thinks past, but on this occasion it is a fact. And all down to your brilliant work.

Regards
Mike

[Kellie Strøm]

For a contrast, have a look at some of the covers for Dutch broadcaster VPRO's schedule listing magazine VPRO GIDS. Magazine site here:
gids.vpro.nl

Current cover:
http://images.vpro.nl/img.db?45014774

Designer Piet Schreuders has more on his site under Graphic Work / Periodicals here:
www.pietschreuders.com

[Wywhp]

A very timely article. RT lost it's distinctiveness a long time ago with regard to design. The content is still good, but the covers don't stand out and constant redesigning of the listings pages is infuriating. Just when they perfect the listings they get bored and change it for the worse. The contribution above by Shem Law made me cringe too, a very immature reaction to constructive criticism - basically "everything else is crap and we have to match it".

[Katherine Baxter]

Just to add from the illustrator's perspective, Shem has offered me two fantastic jobs this year and I feel together in our own small way we have upheld the true tradition of the Radio Times creative heritage.
Yes it would be nice to do more, but marketing force's and reduced budgets do not provide. This is not only frustrating for the illustrator, it must be as frustrating from the other side.
It's a shame we aren't still in the era where creativity came before revenue.

[mike]

Hi Katherine - I sympathise with your position. You illustrate a problem that started a very long time ago.

In 1978 I wrote a piece for Illustrators magazine (the original AOI publication) I had just left publishing after a wonderful ten-year stint. My reason centered on the increasing effect and pressure that the sales department was having on how covers should look. I resisted for as long as I could. But having to listen to their, “Why can’t we have that nice foil blocking and big type?” etc, I realsied it was time to move on.

This is what I wrote back then. “…it is the Art Director who has to own up to his responsibilities. It is up to them to push and fight for what they believe in. Sadly too many are ineffectual, have sold out or have been so heavily anaeshetised by company perks that they can no longer function. To them I say move over and let someone else who cares and has drive. To the illustrators and photographers I say take more interest in how your work is going to be used on a cover. Question, suggest, care and help cut out this malignant growth before it attaches the less stressful selling areas of non-fiction and minority books.” Apart from the ‘company perks’ bit, it is still relevant today, over 30 years on.

[Shem Law]

Mike
Sorry for the delay in replying.
I’d like to try and answer some of the points you raised. Yes you did ‘hit a nerve’ much in the same way that if I had taken it upon myself to describe the last decade of your work as having no ‘typographical integrity’ and ‘dumber than dumb’ I might have struck a nerve with you. I apologise if it made ‘Wywhp’ cringe and they felt it an immature reaction, but I think most right thinking people would have felt the same. The fact that you also think that I am either obviously regularly cowed into submission or don’t care enough to restore Radio times to it’s former glory is also pretty offensive, but let’s not spoil what is turning into a cracking debate. I think Mike, it is high time for a little history lesson in editorial design. When a magazine goes through what is commonly regarded as a ‘purple patch’ in design terms it is usually down to a couple of factors. More often than not it is a forward thinking editor hiring or having thrust upon him an Art Director with a strong will and forceful personality, who in turn has a strong and talented Art Department under him. Classic issues are then created with scant regard to the proprietor's needs or wants, sometimes even with disregard to what the readers want. It is also helped if the magazine in question didn’t have to sell on the newsstand as was the case with colour supplements, or as was the case with Radio Times, there was a monopoly in the TV listings market that meant that you wouldn’t get a depreciably smaller sale if you photo-copied David Driver’s buttocks and put that on the cover (I’m do apologise David for bringing the whole debate below the waistline so early in the afternoon.) I’m sure David will agree that it gave one a certain freedom when sizing up what would make a good cover that week.
The other scenario was that you had an editor who just didn’t give a monkey’s and let you get on with it... But that is a much rarer event. So for great magazines you need a ‘tame/enthusiastic and visually literate’ editor who is not petrified that he/she will be sacked for taking the magazine ‘off-piste’ and a great art director. This ‘perfect storm’ in editorial design doesn’t happen very often and when it does, as you have rightly pointed out in most of your article, the results are glorious. This was the certainly the case at The Sunday Times, Nova, Radio Times, and probably the case at Twen, Show, Man about Town etc... OK let’s fast forward to the 21st century, when the hip young gunslingers of the sixties have retired or spend time in their beautifully designed, immaculate studios (The Cow Gum is actually in the draw with Cow Gum stencilled on it!), pottering around on their vanity projects and odd bits of design picked up on the International creative lecture circuit. They sit back one afternoon peer over their reading glasses and decide to rubbish the efforts of those that came after, when the expense accounts have dried up, budgets slashed, working with publishers and editors who are far to wary and smart to have the design wool pulled over their eyes. Maybe I should quit like you did Mike, maybe that would be the honourable thing to do, stop taking the shilling to produce celebrity pap, maybe... But I still get a buzz from a good story with a good set of pictures, I still enjoy having cover ideas like portraying the demise of Mike Baldwin from Coronation street, as the great Devis painting ‘The Death of Nelson’ or Jeremy Paxman and Anne Widdecombe as if they were contestants on University Challenge. Not a patch on the things David Driver was doing but still ideas that don’t come from the ‘mainstream’. Good magazine ideas are still out there Mike if you look, you just have to take those ‘rose-tinted’ spectacles off to see them...
Shem
P.S. Thanks for sticking up for me Katherine... I appreciate it.

[mike]

Hello Shem – I am sorry that you have taken this so personally. My criticism was purely based on the quality of editorial design and creativity back then and now. I think even you have admitted that it was better then. I do understand the whole issue of sales department demands and competition pressures in this 20th century environment. But frankly I don’t give a damm about that. Good design is good design and conversely, blah, blah… You seem to have made assumptions about me… “Hip young gunslingers of the sixties have retired or spend time in their beautifully designed, immaculate studios (The Cow Gum is actually in the draw with Cow Gum stencilled on it!), pottering around on their vanity projects and odd bits of design picked up on the International creative lecture circuit.” All very amusing, but I’m sorry to disappoint as I don’t do any of that, or peer over reading glasses. I am a graphic designer and am still as passionate (as this blog testifies) as I was back in the early 1960’s. I work on all sorts of projects. I often donate, what talent I have, to a human rights charity. I am sorry that you feel so trapped in your world. Perhaps the new owners of Radio Times might give you a little more freedom. I sincerely hope so.

Mike

[Martin Colyer]

Well, I was at RT with David, and he hired me to take over the Listener from him, yet I sympathise more with Shem. The commercial pressures were virtually non-existant then compared to now — the market was generally expanding, or at worst, pretty healthy. There was an idealistic approach that was fantastic to be part of, and it's certainly true that the mainstream is more conservative now than then, but we can always bemoan the present and point to the greatness of the past. However, that past has been paid its due in plenty of books and exhibitions. Anyway, I actually really, really love the current US Esquire covers (and that's from someone who commissioned about 50 Peter Brookes illustrations!).

[David Driver]

Dear Mike,

the commercial pressures were great during my time at Radio Times. I attended all the sales conferences and put up with a lot of agonising attack, which I took very seriously.
The sales force were proud of their
work, and open to be educated to the best way design could be
implemented in serving their
ambitions for the journal.
It is also important to remember that colour deadlines were six weeks ahead of publication, so we had to ensure that programmes were not moved, this took a lot of negotiation. The other ambition for covers was to ring the changes each week, in terms of medium and content. So one week it would be a Spider the next Dads Army. It was also a joy taking a familiar programme Porridge, and treat it graphically or with illustration.
that sort of adventure very much appealed to the readers, who so often offered sound observation.
Martin (Colyer) must remember that it was commercial pressure that closed The Listener. My sincere best wishes to him, he was a very fine colleague.

Best wishes, David

[Martin Colyer]

I stand corrected! I think I was probably shielded from most of what David talks about (I wasn't senior enough...)

Commercially, though, I would still argue that few art directors in the mainstream today have the power to experiment that David Driver, Michael Rand, John Tennant or Neville Brody had.

And now there's a much greater notion of branding that works against the freedom to change covers dramatically from week to week or month to month.

nb. some would say that it was Alan Coren that closed the Listener, in attempting to make it something it wasn't (ie, Punch), as much as commerce. Or that may be too glib a reading...

[Andy Cowles]

At the risk of pitching more gasoline onto this fire, there are a couple of points I feel it’s important to say.

1. Shem Law is a first class Art Director. He has produced hundreds of brilliant front covers, with ‘Vote Dalek’ being voted the Best British cover of all time. Check it out at:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3102812/Vote-Dalek-image-voted-best-magazine-cover-of-all-time.html

2. The heyday of great magazine design is THIS WEEK. It has to be, if we are to respect the medium as a true moment in time. If we are not looking at the work when it's fresh, how can we really judge it? Look at the New Yorker, Bloomberg Business Week, Grazia, Look, British Vogue, Nuts, Chat, Women’s Health, People, US Glamour and many, many more. They are all doing what all magazines must do, which is to take the immediate future, and package it perfectly for the readers of today. The target is always moving, the business will always have conflicting agendas and there is never enough time. But as Brian Clough quite rightly said: ‘It only takes a second to score a goal, Brian.’

3. Art Directors are problem solvers and inventors, it’s in our nature. But the key to design innovation is the Editor, as they have to take ultimate responsibility for the work. Shem writes very well on this point, and one suspects with a certain amount of chagrin. Radio Times stories are sometimes good, but the copy is endless. Readers are viewers before anything else, they have to be encouraged to read, and that takes a commitment to visual storytelling from the Editor before anything else.

4. The best designed newspaper in the UK is not the Guardian, it’s The Sun. Any fule kno that.

[Geoff Waring]

As a contemporary of Shem and Martin I too have witnessed the changing fortunes of magazines from the cash rich days of the 80's to todays bean counting environments and it strikes me we as designers are really on the SAME side and should be slagging off the rise of PR's and Finance directors rather than our own. We are after all commercial artists and as such are at the mercy of the times we design in. I probably did far more excitingly original layouts as a young designer on Elle under Clive Crook in the late 80's than I can get away with in todays current climate. That said I always try to design for the reader and not to win design awards which certainly works for sales (I launched Glamour and currently Art Direct Good Housekeeping) but not design awards (nil point). I'm still working out how to do both but realistically I'm more likely to find Elvis alive.
I would bet my copies of Nova that Shem would create a totally different RT if he was doing it in the less commercial past... as I know we all would.

I think its actually much harder now...
At Elle in 1988 we had an Art and Picture team of 9.
Not to mention the typesetters, repro house and 3 production people to do all the work we are now expected to do on our Macs with tiny under paid teams...

My personal favourite RT cover was one of Shem's of David Attenborough emerging from the sea like the Titan of natural history TV he is... Interestingly it lost out 'cover of the year' at some design awards to an issue of EXIT magazine that was just green with no coverlines...

[Andy Cowles]

‘Creating this cover is a bit like repeatedly landing a jumbo jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a force six gale’

Those were the words I heard when I took over from Fred Woodward as the new Art Director of Rolling Stone back in 2001. Of course, they turned out to be absolutely true.

Radio Times is the nearest thing this country has to Rolling Stone. There’s huge heritage, massive expectation and a very big circulation. With illustration on the cover both titles were masters of thier own destiny. But once you start dealing with celebrities and PR’s, issues of control and access dominate the process.

I've heard Shem lecture on the art of getting the Modern Celebrity in front of a camera, and have to say he was breathtakingly good, with excellent covers to show for it.

Before listings deregulation in the early 90s, Radio Times had a totally captive audience. If you wanted BBC listings, there was no alternative. The editorial could do pretty much what it wanted. If, as Shem suggests, the Art director put his photocopied arse on the cover, the sale would barely flicker. (Subject of course to getting on the shelves in Smiths). Along with TV times, the title was literally a licence to print money.

But the world today is a completely different place, as this blog so ably demonstrates. In a digital age it’s amazing to me that anyone still buys a listings magazine. But buy them they do, mainstream readers who are actually trying to watch stuff on the telly, rather than media professionals debating finer points of ‘The Art’

This is not to say that art isn’t important, or that design doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite, in a world full of generic content, design is the key to unlocking brand value. Often it's the only thing that justifies a cover price.

For readers who may be curious, I’m currently Editorial Development Director of IPC magazines. Amongst many other titles, I’ve worked extensively on TV Times, TV Easy, TV and Satellite Week and What’s On TV.

We all know readers have a multitude of choice. Any magazine, ours included, can always be better designed. But if the business model of Radio Times is to sell lots of copies at full price on a 2011 newsstand, you can be assured that a good picture of a famous face, well presented with enticing coverlines, will shift plenty more than a drawing of a bear.

[Etienneshrdlu]

Andy: how would you ever know, if you don't try a drawing of a bear?

For those bemoaning the stultifying influence of the bean counters, see what happens when you drop into the sales department and start messing about with their Excel spreadsheets. They'll quite rightly tell you to fuck off, because you haven't the slightest clue what you're doing.

It's long past time for Art Directors to start defending their own turf, taste and judgement. It was received publishing wisdom, as recently as 2010, that business magazines *must* look interchangeably banal in order to sell. Now go ask Bloomberg Businessweek how they're doing under Richard Turley.

[Paul Keers]

There are two commercial publishing aspects to this debate which I think need airing.

The first is the deregulation of television listings. When RT was at its peak, it had a monopoly on television listings. If you wanted to get a listing of your television programmes a week ahead, this was the only way (followed by TV Times later on). This monopoly meant that they could put almost anything on the cover and be guaranteed sales.

The second is the shift in the subscription/delivery market. Again, most of the early audience for RT had it delivered along with their newspapers. It was not competing for attention on the newsstand shelves for impulse purchase.

Both these factors changed utterly, and RT was forced to compete for sales on newsstand shelves against a host of TV listings mags.

Surely those two commercial factors were the biggest forces for change on the magazine's cover design?

[Cosmopolitanscum]

‘Creating this cover is a bit like repeatedly landing a jumbo jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a force six gale’

calm down dear. it's only a commercial.

have you ever thought that the reason we let you have the covers is so we can get on with the really important job of deciding what goes on inside a magazine. those 'tame' editors you talk about... maybe they were just more preoccupied with the bit that people actually read and connect with rather than the bit that wins awards / get debated about on blogs / sells the magazine. having been flippant about andy's post i think he's right to bring up celebrity because that is another change in the landscape.

That's why the current Radio Times i would say is a quality bit of production. No covers are ropey but inside, pretty good. authoritative, clear, intelligent,

Mike, I think your criticisms of the Radio Times were not specific enough. If you are complaining that they don't use any good illustration any more, well you could level that at any magazine. illustration has given way to photography. we'd try and do one illustrated feature an issue in Blueprint but that's all we could afford. And again much of your criticism is focused on the cover. The complete deregulation of TV listings seems to be just a footnote as well. It totally changed the commercial landscape and let's not forget that's what this is ultimately about.

Throughout my time at Blueprint we knew that the cover was just about all the management could really get their heads round so if we gave them - within reason - what they wanted we could get on with doing exactly what we wanted inside. Such as commissioning you to write for us, Mike.

ps why is this blog so narrow? leave things to an art director and honestly, things are impossible to READ. ;-)

[Geoff Waring]

Its not about really about defending the designers turf Etienne... each magazine is different and has a different market... Bloomberg Business week doesn't have to sell on the checkouts in Tesco...

[mike]

Hello Cosmopolitanscum (what no real name?). My comments about Radio Times were about the whole thing not just the covers. Had I added in yet more imagery my blog would have blown up. This post has prompted so much traffic that I realise that all those working at the coalface of editorial design are really passionate bunch. The whole point of my piece was not just about the brilliant covers and art direction that Driver brought to Radio Times, but more about the times we live in. We have all been well and truly dumbed down over the past decade. Especially commercial magazines (I know there is a clue in that statement). This post could develop in to a far wider debate. But at the heart of this rot is celebrity culture, greed and the kind of awful exploitative reality style shows on TV that have grown like a cancer over the past decade. That has much to do with the state we are currently in. The only bastion of quality television left, BBC Four, is now under financial cutbacks (do go to Facebook there is a protest growing on that all can join). The erosion of quality happens all around us. We need to try our best to hold on to the things we believe in. Otherwise what is the point?

Mike