Richard Turley (Editorial Director/Designer: Interview, Nuts, Bloomberg Businessweek, more)

06/28/24 • 42 min

RICHARD TURLEY CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP

—

Richard Turley is changing the idea of the magazine. Richard Turley has no idea what a magazine is in the year 2024. And in this sense, he is not so different from you or I.

Richard Turley’s magazines—and there are many—are confrontations, loaded with text, or not, sometimes, but if you ask him, he’s not sure what he’s doing. He claims to be boring. He once said, “I’m a boring, traditional, formalist thinker” and he probably is, but you have to really know your stuff to get where he’s coming from.

Where Richard Turley is coming from is England, yes. He got his start at The Guardian. He was then lured to New York to help revamp Bloomberg Businessweek and his work there made art directors everywhere ugly jealous.

The secret to Richard Turley’s work is the freedom it seems to exhibit. From form. From rules. From common sense. Sometimes even from good taste. But only if you’re stuck up. Which Richard Turley is most definitely not.

Richard Turley once claimed his design philosophy was “to do something unlikable, repellent, horrible, and ugly.” Richard Turley is punk in a way, but mainstream. He’s underground-adjacent. Which just makes him even more punk.

Richard Turley has worked at MTV and ad agencies. Richard Turley designed the logo for one of the world’s largest sports. Richard Turley now runs his own creative agency. And is the art director of Interview magazine. And co-created Civilization. And Nuts International. And Offal. And has designed a literary magazine, Heavy Traffic. And has just redesigned one of the most iconic magazines in existence. Which one? You’ll have to listen to the podcast.

But just remember this: Richard Turley is a busy man.

I, however, am not Richard Turley. Far from it.

Nobody is.

RICHARD TURLEY CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP

—

Richard Turley is changing the idea of the magazine. Richard Turley has no idea what a magazine is in the year 2024. And in this sense, he is not so different from you or I.

But just remember this: Richard Turley is a busy man.

I, however, am not Richard Turley. Far from it.

Nobody is.

Previous Episode

Versha Sharma (Editor: Teen Vogue)

IT’S COMPLICATED

—

If Teen Vogue’s editorial still surprises you, it might be time to admit that this says more about you than it does about Teen Vogue. And also, perhaps, that you haven’t been paying attention.

Teen Vogue is not the first magazine aimed at “the young” of course, and it’s not the first one to address multiple issues. But...Teen Vogue is the first, perhaps, to make a certain kind of noise.

Since well before the Trump presidency, but certainly turbocharged during it, Teen Vogue has mixed tips on fashion and beauty, profiles about the latest girl groups from Korea, and the scoop on the stars of Bridgerton, with political analysis and opinion, stories about identity and social justice, and an election primmer that is maybe one of the most thorough you’ll find anywhere.

Versha Sharma has been editor since 2021 and has not only maintained all the pillars that make up Teen Vogue but enhanced them. She came to Teen Vogue from overtly political media like Talking Points Memo, NowThis, Vocativ, and MSNBC. And she says she’s landed her dream job.

Sharma and her team are unabashed and unapologetic about what they do—and know that they are serving a large community of very active young women (65% of the readership) who follow the brand on every social channel imaginable, visit the website by the millions, and attend Teen Vogue Summits—in person!—to listen to their favorite influencers, singers, entrepreneurs, actors and activists talk shop.

Sharma feels like the luckiest editor in the industry. But one thing is missing: paper.

Teen Vogue discontinued its print edition more than seven years ago. Her new dream? Convincing her bosses at Condé Nast to bring it back.

Next Episode

Rob Orchard (Cofounder: Delayed Gratification)

THE SLOWER THE BETTER

—

Given that this is the final show of the season, it is perhaps a bit poetic that our guest today is Rob Orchard from Delayed Gratification. Not that we would plan an episode around a bad pun. Not us.

Delayed Gratification is media created to comment on, and offer a counterpoint to, the media. Rob Orchard and his team met each other, for the most part, in Dubai in the early aughts, working on Time Out Dubai. In that magical place on the Gulf they found—no surprise—lots of money and conditions amenable to journalism of all sorts.

Then Orchard returned to London ... and he didn’t like what he found. He and his friends and colleagues were dismayed by the realities of the digital world, the relentless emphasis on quantity over quality, the losing battle between what they wanted to do and the evangelists of SEO and purveyors of click bait, and so they created Delayed Gratification.

Inspired by the Slow Journalism movement taking root around the world, Delayed Gratification is a quarterly publication that values contemplation and time, a curation of the important events of the past three months, along with long-form essays and colorful infographics. The result is a reminder that important information, properly curated or edited, continues to be enlightening, informative, entertaining—and extremely important.

Delayed Gratification is an indie in the truest sense of the word. And probably the only media that suffers existential quandaries around their own social media. Because Rob Orchard and his team are passionate about getting things right. Not getting there first.