Editors vs. Art Directors: Part III

A word on the recent Mark Newman blog post about the art director/edi... er, excuse me, I mean the editor/art director relationship. It seems the editor is always right.

As you might expect, there's a bit of foot stomping about the piece in art directorial circles—at least I think that's what it is. As we are just art directors, we can't express ourselves very clearly with words—so I'm hearing complaints but I'm not really sure what they're about. People think we art directors speak a secret language, sorta like porpoises, but no, we make no more sense to each other than we do to anyone else. Sad.

So, as I am incapable of mounting an effective counter-argument, I think I better concede his point, yes the editor is always "right" but only because he or she is defined as being so-at most magazines the art director reports to the editor. I'm actually not sure why this is a point worth making, there are very few of us who do not report to someone—editors report to publishers, publishers report to presidents, and presidents report to boards of directors. There's a lot more Dagwoods around than Mr. Bumsteads.

So why is he making it? Probably because it has never been less true. In the 1940s, when art directors were assigning a fraction of the art that appears in a modern magazine and pasting up rude mechanicals for hot-type forms, Mark Newman would have felt no need to defend his autonomy against the visual clerks who brought largely generic form to his words. It's now that the culture has grown increasingly visual, and the cognitive walls between words, images, and form have been shattered at the most successful magazines that his point seems urgent. The editorial inches, budgets, and staff devoted to art and design has never been higher. Most editors know that if they aren't visually conversant, their career will be limited and their magazine will suffer.

Now, good art directors have always been word people. The translation of verbal ideas into visual and graphic ones requires it. But, a lot of old-school editors are playing catchup right now, and they know it. But clearly, there are also and a few who haven't noticed that the nature of the magazine has changed.

There are, of course hacks in every field-art directors who can't read or understand past a headline, and complacent and blunt-witted editors, but we have entered a period in which, whether you are an art director or an editor, you must be bicameral to be fully competent. The increasing number of visually astute editors (and editors who know they should be, but aren't) has been good for us, and it's the future. No matter who's boss, we'll be getting up in each other's business for the foreseeable future.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Buy Jandos' new book!]

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By Jandos Rothstein -- Folio: Contributor

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