Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life
Why my dream career in magazines didn’t disappoint (Part One)
It’s an oft-quoted saying, variously attributed, to Confucius and Mark Twain among others, but in my case, it was absolutely true. Choosing a career I loved, meant it never felt like I was actually doing a job and I adored (almost) every minute of working in the magazine publishing business for over 40 years.
I was 12 years old when I told my mother I had chosen my career path: “I want to work on glossy magazines” I announced. Her response was immediate, “Then I’m sure you shall”. She told me years later that she’d had absolutely no idea how I was going to achieve this ambition: it was the early 1970s and we lived in Belfast, where there were no magazines to speak of and not a lot of gloss. But those few words she spoke were probably the single most important sentence I would ever hear in my life. In saying what she did, my mum allowed me to feel that there was absolutely no question that I could – and would - achieve my goal.
I grew up with magazines. My father used to bring them home for us every week from the newsagents close to his tailoring business in town: Teddy Bear and Diana for me and my sister when we were young and She for my Mother. Then there was Bunty with its comic strip The Four Marys and the cut-out figure and clothes on the back cover. As soon as I could, I started to choose my own titles: Jackie and Petticoat were favourites, especially the Cathy & Claire problem page and the fashion drawings. I used to look at the by-lines - the names of the people who had written the pieces - and also at the credits underneath photographs and illustrations and wonder who these people were who were lucky enough to do this for a living!
THE GAME CHANGER
Then I discovered Nova. It’s hard to explain the effect this publication had, not just on me, but on the publishing business as a whole and on its readers. It was a game-changer. Until its launch in 1965, women’s magazines were cosy and home-spun dealing with exclusively female subjects. Then Nova came along. Described by The Times as "a politically radical, beautifully designed, intellectual women's magazine”, Nova reflected the social revolution taking place in the sixties and covered subjects that had hitherto been taboo, such as sex, abortion, drugs, the pill, feminism, homosexuality and race. My mother loved it and, when it was lying around the house, I would flick through the pages and become totally absorbed.
It wasn’t just the content, but the whole look of it I was mesmerised by. It was glossy and stylish with arresting cover images, outré fashion shoots and ground-breaking art direction. Instead of pictures of pop groups, my bedroom walls were lined with double page spreads from Nova. Two in particular stick in my mind. One was a feature on the murder of actress Sharon Tate in California by followers of the cult leader Charles Manson. Manson was pictured sitting at the centre of a group of his female cult members, all looking straight at the camera. Granted, Manson looked fairly manic, but the women, with their dreamy smiles, long hair and hippy, cheesecloth tops all looked so “normal”. I just could not conceive of how any of them could have committed this heinous crime and how Manson could execute such power over them.
The other was a feature on Levi jeans, by Assistant Editor, Brigid Keenan. The image that illustrated the opening spread was of a row of black Americans, perched on high stools or standing along the front of a soda bar, all wearing Levis that were variously customised with fabric, appliqués, buttons, badges, dye and fringing. I was completely taken with the fact that they all looked so “cool” and I examined the photograph in close detail. Then I saw the credit below the image, “Illustration by Jean-Paul Goude”. I couldn’t believe it! How could anyone be so talented and paint something so incredible? I still have the cutting (see below). It’s dog-eared and worn with the old Sellotape that held the two pages together attached, but it represents such a seminal moment in my life that I just couldn’t bear to ever get rid of it. It was at this moment that I resolved to become a part of this rarefied world of glossy magazines – whatever it took.
A favourite spread from Nova magazine
MY FIRST MAGAZINE EXPERIENCES
I formed a magazine at school and enrolled fellow pupils to help with it. It was a very modest affair, in black and white, the typewritten and illustrated pages produced on a Roneo machine, but it was my first foray into the world of magazine production which would eventually become my life-long career.
During the sixth form at my Belfast grammar school, I applied to journalism college and also to art school. I couldn’t really decide whether it was words or pictures I wanted to explore most. I got accepted for both courses, but decided art school would be much more fun! A Foundation Course led me on to study graphic design, first in Belfast and subsequently in London. I knew I needed to be in London, at the heart of the media world, if I was to pursue my dream of getting into magazines.
I was lucky: my art college, Central School of Art and Design (now Central St Martins) had great visiting lecturers who primarily worked in industry and came to tutor students part time. One of these was Adrienne Leman, art director at The Illustrated London News that had begun as the first illustrated news magazine in 1842, when the articles were accompanied by woodcuts, but by the 1970s had colour photographs and a glossy cover. Adrienne became my teacher and mentor and gave me work experience at the publication’s offices in Bloomsbury so I could learn the ropes of magazine production. Another holiday job followed at Ms London, one of the original free magazines given out to commuters during the 1970s and ‘80s.
A PROPER JOB
My first proper job, on leaving art school was as a junior in the art department on teen magazine My Guy.
The My Guy annual, a compilation by former editor Frank Hopkinson of the best of the magazine, published in 2006
I learned how to edit pictures, design pages and make copy fit. I also got to work on the magazine’s hallmark photo stories. Along with models, these featured some, now very well-known faces, including a youthful Hugh Grant, Tracey Ullman, Tony Hadley of New Romantic band Spandau Ballet and even a baby-faced George Michael. Everyone on the magazine team was under thirty and we had a blast, playing pranks on one another, trying on clothes from the fashion cupboard and gathering each evening in the local pub or wine bar to discuss our day and ponder the meaning of life. I made several life-long friends there who I am still in touch with. I felt so grown up and couldn’t quite believe I was actually working on a magazine that was read by hundreds of thousands of people every week.
A youthful George Michael in a My Guy photo story
Although My Guy was (mostly) in colour, it was produced on newsprint and “saddle-stitched”, the publishing term for a spine that is stapled. My ultimate goal was still “the glossies”, that had “perfect bound” spines, top quality shiny paper and upmarket content and cover images. I was becoming increasingly interested in interior design and had decorated and furnished my rented accommodation with the latest looks copied from Terence Conran’s iconic furnishing store, Habitat. I began to buy interiors magazines and decided this was the route I wanted to follow rather than working for one of the fashion titles.
THE BEST JOB
Stints with interiors magazines Ideal Home, Homes & Gardens and House Beautiful followed, initially as a layout artist, then later as a stylist, which has to be one of the best jobs in the world. My role was to create still life arrangements and room-sets with furniture and “props” selected from the big furnishing brands and department stores and then work with photographers to turn them into images for the pages, afterwards writing the words to accompany them. “So, you basically just go shopping every day?” a friend said to me at the time. Well yes, in very simple terms that was about the size of it!
When a brand was launching a new range or product, their PR company would hold an event, perhaps a lunch or evening drinks, or occasionally a lavish trip abroad, to tell journalists about it, in the hope they would feature the products in their publication. There seemed to be some social occasion to go to almost every day and a few of my contemporaries earned the reputation of being prepared to “Turn up for the opening of an envelope”! It was easy to become blasé about it all and once, when my mother asked if I was enjoying my job, I gave a resigned sigh and said, “Yes, but honestly, I’m getting so sick of drinking Buck’s Fizz at lunchtimes”. “Bully for you” was her sarcastic reply. The arrogance of youth!
There was hard work too: organising photographic shoots was quite an undertaking and required a lot of advance planning to make sure all the people and all the props involved were going to be in the right place at the right time. Shoots often went on well into the night to get the set of images that was needed and hundreds of products had to be unpacked and unwrapped before the shoot and then packed up again, labelled and loaded into vans taking them back to the companies who had supplied them. But there was usually a great team spirit with the photographer, the art director and the stylist on the shoot often becoming long standing friends as well as being colleagues.
Then, in the days following a shoot, back at the office, all the details and prices of products for the feature had to be checked and the copy and picture captions written. As press day loomed and all the content for the magazine had to be finished and sent off to the printers, the atmosphere in the office would become frenzied with everyone beavering away to finalise their pieces for that issue. I enjoyed all of it, even when it was stressful, and I was finally beginning to combine my love of both words and pictures. This would lead me onto the next phase of my career, becoming a magazine editor…….
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Really enjoyed this, thanks Susy. Got to say I’m a little envious of your experience! I also aspired to work in magazines, and was also fortunate enough to be able to do so. However, I’ve always felt that I got into the business 20 years too late. What I would have given to be able to write and edit mags in the 90s, or any pre-internet era! Unfortunately, the web loomed over my publishing career like a dark cloud. Quarterly ABC reviews (where sales and subscription figures were made public, for any non-mag people), were nothing but depressing, and I watched as colleagues on other titles lost their jobs until, finally, the same fate befell me with the closure of ShortList in 2018. I still love magazines, and there are still some great ones around, but I fear we’ll never return to the late twentieth century golden age.
Oh, and that My Guy cover… I mean… Wow.
Look forward to reading part 2!