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THE (MAGAZINE) DOCTOR IS IN — Megan Schertler wants to help you make magazines. Yes, you … and you … and you too. But she also wants to ensure that once you make a magazine, you make another one. And then one after that. She wants to make sure that you know it's not easy to create a magazine or to run one or to publish a second one or to sustain a magazine or media brand or to run a business. Megan is big on print. She’s one of those extremely rare people who’s held down numerous magazine jobs while never working on the digital side of things. Yes, really. People like her exist. So she knows more than many her age that print is more engaging, produces more loyalty, and creates a deeper and more meaningful connection with the message on the page than any other medium. And so with her partners, Megan now helms In Real Life Media to help would-be magazine makers sure, but also some of the world’s largest brands navigate the realities of the magazine world. Because while we all love print here, it’s hard, it’s expensive, and it is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. But it also results in something glorious, and Megan travels the world speaking at conferences and to people like me to spread the word.. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE PRIME OF MR. NEVILLE BRODY — “Once you have broken down the rules, literally anything is possible.’” In the business of magazine design, few names resonate as profoundly as Neville Brody. And, to this day, he lives by those words.  Renowned for his groundbreaking work and commitment to pushing design boundaries at magazines like The Face, Arena, Per Lui, and others, Brody is a true auteur in the world of design. We talked to him at the launch of his spectacular new monograph, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3. Nurtured on 1970s British punk music, which rejected anything that appeared self-indulgent or overwrought, Brody found the perfect launch pad at The Face, the London-based music, fashion, and culture monthly, created by editor Nick Logan in 1980. The Face inspired an array of fellow magazine rule-breakers, including the late Tibor Kalman, David Carson, and Fabien Baron, who calls Brody’s work “powerful, aggressive, and simple.” Since then, Brody's journey in graphic design has been marked by a relentless, almost unforgiving pursuit of innovation. His magazine design challenged conventional norms and redefined visual storytelling. Brody’s design approach is characterized by a rejection of conventional grid systems and editorial hierarchies, and a willingness to break free from established design rules. And he thinks magazines today are missing a giant opportunity: “That’s the beauty of print, that you can’t achieve in the same way digitally. Digital is so commoditized. We’re not expressing content anymore. We’re just delivering it. Neville Brody's legacy in magazine design lies in his fearless approach to challenging the status quo and his ability to capture the zeitgeist of his time. By pushing the boundaries of traditional graphic design, he not only influenced the look and feel of magazines but also inspired a generation of designers to embrace innovation, experimentation, and a spirit of creative rebellion. Brody's work continues to be celebrated for its enduring impact on the evolution of graphic design and its role in shaping the visual language of contemporary media. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

BAD BUNNY — Playboy is many things to quite a few people. We don't have to go into its history, but the thing you need to know is this: it's back. Yes, there will be photos of women in various stages of undress, and yes, there will be sharp writing from sharp minds. But mostly, the people behind it are going to try and build up the media brand, and that's important, because Playboy was arguably the first magazine that used its content at the center of a much larger and much more diverse brand ecosystem. The new editor-in-chief also comes with another title, Chief Brand Officer, which gives you an indication that these people aren't messing around. Philip Picardi has a long history in magazines and has also worked in brand. He's also gay, which honestly, I have some trouble saying here because it doesn't matter that he is. But when I tell my friends that the new editor-in-chief of Playboy, an heir to Hugh Hefner of all people, is gay, well, that raises an eyebrow. Because Playboy is a lot of things, but it's also a very male, very heterosexual brand. But what if I told you that some of the best writing coming out of Playboy now was being written by a cadre of hyper-talented young women, that Philip's boss used to work at National Geographic and Disney, or that Philip received his master's degree from the Harvard Divinity School? Should I keep going? Because I could. Just listen to our discussion. We're going to dispel some misconceptions and then some. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE INDUSTRY'S LITTLE SISTER — In early April, what’s left of the magazine industry gathered at Terminal 5 to see who would win this year’s National Magazine Awards—the ASMEs. Throughout the evening, the usual suspects stepped up to accept their Alexander Calder brass elephants—the ‘Ellies’—on behalf of their teams at The Atlantic, New York, and The New York Times Magazine.  Then came the award for General Excellence, Service and Lifestyle—a category that covers every food, fashion, and fitness magazine in the business. And the Ellie went to… content juggernaut Highsnobiety—a sneaker blog-turned-cool kid media amalgam that encompasses a twice-annual $20-per-issue print magazine, plus a flood of social media, a website that is also an e-commerce platform, and a creative agency that does 360-degree marketing and storytelling for brands. Before the crowd could start scratching their graying heads, a Billie Eilish lookalike in a gray Thom Brown skirt-and-pant suit took to the dais. There were plenty of people in that room who had never given Highsnobiety much, if any, thought.  But in that moment, this woman, Willa Bennett, Highsnobiety’s 30-year-old editor-in-chief, had officially become a force to be reckoned with. Not only that, but Highsnobiety’s business model, which bends rules that had long been sacrosanct in magazine journalism, suddenly appeared to have won the seal of approval from the oldest of the old guard.   The post at Highsnobiety was a major leap for Bennett. Just two years ago, she was the social media manager at GQ. Our friends who worked with her there tell us they thought of her as “the industry’s little sister”—hungry, passionate, and looking to translate the magic of magazines to a new generation. They said that even though she’s disrupting the magazine as we once knew it, at heart Bennett is a “a magazine junkie who really venerates  the old ways.”  And now the surprise win has put her in the spotlight of the establishment media, with The New York Times Styles running a portrait of Bennett in her signature suit-and-tie look on its cover. The win inspired a segment on the Slate Culture Gabfest in which the hosts pondered, “What Is a Magazine Now?” Over in Spreadlandia, we thought, Why not turn that question directly to Willa Bennett herself? In the end, this conversation left us feeling more optimistic than usual about the future of media. It also made us feel old as shit. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. — This episode is a special collboration with our friends at The Spread and is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type, and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

CHECK, PLEASE — Thanks for tuning in. Just a note before we get going: This is the 50th episode of The Full Bleed, and I, along with the team here at Magazeum, truly appreciate the time you spend with us. Waiting is what I consider a perfect magazine. Not because of its design or the writing, though both are stellar. But mostly because it functions as a closed loop. How? The subject and the audience are one and the same. Waiting, you see, is a magazine about creatives in New York’s service industry. And it is a magazine for creatives in New York’s service industry. That’s a neat trick and also makes me wonder why no one had done this before founder, editor-in-chief, and complete magazine neophyte Adele Blanton hit upon the idea. Adele has done the math: 10 percent of the estimated 700,000 people working in the food and beverage industry in New York are artists of some kind. Artists, actors, writers, dancers. You name it. And that number is a healthy baseline for any publication. Waiting has published three well-received issues and now she and the team behind it has to figure out how to maintain and grow the media. That’s one of the many things we talk about on the show. Did we tell you this is our 50th episode? Because it’s our 50th episode. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST — Where do magazine designers go after all the magazines are gone? That’s a question we’ve often pondered in recent years. Well, if you’ve been paying close attention, you’d probably guess, as it turns out, a lot of them go to Cupertino. And much of this migration can be traced to 2014, when today’s guest, AIGA Medalist and Emmy award-winning creative director Arem Duplessis, left his storied job at The New York Times Magazine to go to work at Apple. You might be asking yourself, "Why would one of America’s most high-profile magazine designers leave a coveted job at an iconic publication—one that brought him global recognition, countless awards, and deep creative satisfaction—for a famously secretive company known, well, for locking away its talent in a vault of non-disclosure agreements?" But the better question might be, "Why wouldn’t he?" Duplessis is arguably one of the most influential creative directors of his time. His ten years of covers for The New York Times Magazine shaped its vision and identity. As creative director at GQ, he helped create the now-ubiquitous Gotham family of fonts. And he’s blazed the trail for print designers in search of digital futures. While the departure of big-name magazine designers like Rem to Silicon Valley may strike fear in some, it reaffirms what many of us have long known: Despite years of slumping newsstand sales and magazine closures, the all-purpose skills of elite creative directors are still very much in demand. As former ESPN creative director Neil Jamieson says, “Why wouldn’t Apple be hiring magazine designers? No category of designer is more multifaceted. Beyond the fundamentals, they do branding, packaging, identity, storytelling. They have experience on set, with video, social, and short-form storytelling.” There’s no question there’s a dire need in the corporate field for these kinds of skills. The question that remains unanswered, so far, is: Can that kind of digital work ever deliver the same creative fulfillment that magazines do? We talked to Duplessis about learning to scuba dive in his Dad’s Virginia quarry, the modeling career that wasn’t, cutting his teeth at the controversial hip-hop magazine, Blaze, adapting to life on the West Coast, and what he’s planning for life after work. — THIS EPISODE IS MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR FRIENDS AT COMMERCIAL TYPE AND FREEPORT PRESS. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE INTERNET WILL NOT BE TELEVISED — The tech industry is easy to dislike, admire, ridicule, resent, need, and all of the above. Look, this podcast doesn’t exist without tech. But there is also no "enshittification" without tech. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow that word has entered the general lexicon with a speed and ubiquity that might make someone like, I don’t know, Shakespeare envious. If he knew what was going on. Which he doesn’t. All of this to introduce InFormation, a magazine about tech, but more importantly, a magazine about “what tech is doing to us.” The people behind it work in the industry and so understand it, which makes them dislike it even more. Twenty-five years ago, InFormation was like the Spy magazine of the dot com boom, a bit of a kick in the pants to an industry and a group of people who saw themselves in utopian if not messianic terms. And while they might still see themselves that way (spoiler alert: they most certainly do), a lot of people in the world do not, and so InFormation is back, it has reformed, and is being published again, with the same attitude, that is it continues to kick ass but with more feeling, because Silicon Valley is no longer a place but a mindset, techbros are a thing and a wealthy thing at that, and, well, there’s a general feeling that the world has been thoroughly colonized and completely enshittified. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER — “I finally went up to Graydon and I said, ‘Hey, you know, I know you like me. I know you wanted me to be here, but I can also do covers.’” • • • That’s today’s guest, Mark Seliger. He’s the same Mark Seliger who, at the moment of this exchange with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, had already shot over 180 covers for Rolling Stone, where he was the chief photographer from 1992-2002. Seliger had been heavily recruited by GQ and Vanity Fair to move to Condé Nast. But, as he learned, the days of being Fred Woodward’s go-to image maker were over. Once again, he was the new guy. And he saw an opportunity to reinvent himself. Fortunately, reinvention is Seliger’s middle name. (Well, it’s really Alan, but you get what we mean). For example: Seliger grew up in rural Texas, but decides to go big and moves to New York City to get into the magazine business. Reinvention #1. He gets early work at business magazines like Manhattan, Inc. In short time his portraiture lands him a few plum assignments at Rolling Stone. Reinvention #2. Unforgettable shoots and an immediate connection with Woodward lands him the title of chief photographer, and he picks right up where the legendary Annie Leibovitz leaves off. Reinvention #3. His exposure at Rolling Stone leads Seliger (along with his pal Woodward) to directing music videos for A-listers like Lenny Kravitz and Courtney Love, and Gap commercials with LL Cool J and Missy Elliott. Reinvention #4. When Covid hits, and publishing effectively shuts down, he pivots to documentary photography and produces an epic portfolio of an empty and still New York City that becomes the book, The City That Finally Sleeps. Reinvention #5. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, Reinvention #6: Seliger starts writing songs in his free time, and then forms the band Rusty Truck. And at the moment Seliger is reminding Graydon Carter that he knows his way around a cover shoot, Rusty Truck releases its first album, Luck’s Changing Lanes, which is produced by Lenny Kravitz, Gillian Welch, Willie Nelson, Dave Rawlings, Sheryl Crow, T-Bone Burnett, and Bob Dylan. That’s a lot. A whole lot. But for Seliger, it’s all of a piece. Photography, music, work, life. He says it’s all about following your curiosity. Observing. Not just looking but seeing. “For me,” he explains, “it’s all about storytelling—the storytelling in photography translated well into the storytelling of songwriting. And that exploration leads you to do something that you’d never done before.” That’s the story of his life. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

REALITY BITES —  I am Gen X. I’m telling you this because, well, this is hardly something that is ever relevant to any conversation when, in fact, it is also always relevant to everything. But I just don't talk about it because who cares when I was born, or that we Gen Xers all live in the long and darkest of dark shadow of Boomers, or the loud echo of Millennials, or the annoyingly brash and unknowing living of whatever the other younger generations are called. I’m Gen X, and I just know one thing: there are more of you than there are of me, and there always have been. I'm saying all this because today we're gonna talk about Geezer magazine, as if any Gen X-er in their right mind would ever call themselves a geezer, because that's Boomer stuff. And hey, did you see we're turning 60? For f**k’s sake. As if. So yes, Geezer, a magazine by and for Gen X that is both completely irreverent and surprisingly serious and even tender, that balances nostalgia with irony. And while Gen X’s favorite word might be whatever, the secret is we care what you think. We always have. You just have to first extract a whole lot of other stuff, that cold exterior built up as a defense mechanism against a world that is stupid, and that for whatever reason the Boomers keep running. Meaning sure, we like to say never mind, but we also sang “Don’t You Want Me” and “Debaser.” So just take a chill pill. I promise we’ll talk about a rad magazine on today’s show.. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

ONE EYE ON THE WORLD — Monocle, the brainchild of the expat Canadian magazine maker, Tyler Brûlé, was born in early 2007, a relatively awful year for the magazine business, not to mention the entire world. In that year alone, more than 100 print magazines folded—or, as Wikipedia terms it, were “dis-established”—among them: Life (yet again), Premiere, Red Herring, House & Garden, Jane, Child, and Business 2.0. Months later, the global economy was hit by the Great Recession. But Brûlé was coming out from under a rather lengthy non-compete agreement with Time Inc., after selling his previous startup, Wallpaper*, to the American media giant, and he was desperate to get back to the newsroom. Given the times, and the stream of fading print publications, one could judge Brûlé’s resolve as “madness,” as Don Quixote cried in the opening clip. Digital was all the rage, the iPad was knocking on the door, and the radiation of the frenzied dotcom meltdown was still slowly killing legacy media. “Madness”? Not if you know Tyler Brûlé.  In his world, “life as it should be” is rich—a morning espresso in a bustling cafe with a crisp newspaper written and edited in the romance language of your choice, sorting out weekends skiing the Alps or lounging on the Med while riding the night train to Vienna. And then there’s the print—not only the magazine itself, printed on “upwards of nine different paper stocks, crammed with extremely niche articles about carbon-neutral airlines in Costa Rica and sleek Afghan restaurants in Dubai,” but also special edition newspapers, coffee table books, and Monocle-approved travel guides.  (Someone forgot to tell Brûlé and his brilliant team of collaborators that print is dead). In a media culture traditionally obsessed with scale at any cost, Monocle’s modest 100,000 circulation belies a thriving multi-media juggernaut that confidently ignores the lure of social media. “We’re in a very fortunate position that we’re an independent publisher,” says Brûlé, “and we don’t have the commercial pressures of a big parent. And those commercial pressures can be two-fold: One is cost savings, but the other pressures are to go and chase after every new trend.” In fact, Brûlé thinks of Monocle as a family business. “We don’t set out to be pioneers, but also we’re a family company, and we can choose to do things quickly if we want to.” That same culture has manufactured the pressure to establish one’s entrepreneurial cred. You’re not the editor, you’re the founding editor, the founding creative director, the founding director. But when asked about how he thinks of and refers to himself, Brûlé answers simply: “If I think about ‘What do I do?’ I’m a journalist. I’m out to be a witness. I’m out to absorb, I’m out to interpret, and I’m out to communicate.  A print-centric media phenomenon, created as a family business, led by a journalist. Surprising? Not for someone who’s been building a life—as it should be. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE MAGAZINE'S THE THING — When you chat with a filmmaker who has become a magazine editor you start to note the parallels between filmmaking and magazine making that you never considered before. Ok, that I hadn’t considered before. The relationship between editors and art directors, and the relationship between a director and cinematographer, well, that’s actually almost the same thing. Editors and writers. Editors and actors. Copy editors and film editors. On and on. It’s uncanny. Seen is a magazine about the art of film and filmmaking that comes from BlackStar Projects, home of an annual film festival in Philadelphia and a creative space that “uplifts the work of Black, Brown and Indigenous artists.” Seen grew out of the program notes for the festival and it is everything cinema magazines used to be: thorough, intellectually stimulating, challenging.  Heidi Saman, the editor, trained as a film maker and then worked at Fresh Air for over a decade. She doesn’t come from the magazine world. But she’s a storyteller. And after you listen to our chat, you, too, will see, perhaps, that making a magazine is a lot like making a movie. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

A STYLE ALL HER OWN — Maggie Bullock: Last month, the big, bad headline in the world of women’s media was the shuttering of the groundbreaking feminist website Jezebel. We’ve since learned that Jezebel could be revived, but who even knows what that means? Regardless, the “closure” unleashed a wave of mourning, even among magazine fanatics like us who’ve become a little bit inured to the decimation of the legacy magazines that Jezebel was invented to skewer. Rachel, Jezebel was supposed to be the radical “antidote to the establishment”—and it didn’t have to contend with the print and circulation costs that sink bigger ships. When that topples, you have to ask yourself: What era of women’s media are we in now?  Rachel Baker: That’s what makes it such an interesting time to talk to Stella Bugbee. Ask any 30- or 40-something today about the one women’s media brand that is absolutely a daily must-read, and she will say New York magazine’s The Cut—the site that, starting in 2012, Stella built. The Cut was not just a women’s magazine re-sized for the internet, but a whole-cloth reinvention of the form. Jezebel (which was founded in 2007) was as much its forebear as the Elles and Vogues of the world: The Cut had the irreverence and voice-yness and political savvy of new media and the high-caliber production value of old media. And it was built to last: While we may have lost Jezebel, The Cut is still operating, more or less, on the blueprint that Stella created—and going strong.  Maggie Bullock: What we’ve always found fascinating about Bugbee is that she started out as a designer—she worked at a creative agency and on the visual side of a ton of cool indie magazines (like Interview and Topic) and had a stint at The New York Times before becoming the design director of the original Domino. But then when that magazine folded, she somehow totally switched teams, becoming an editor and a really great writer. I can’t think of anybody else who did that, can you? It's no surprise that The New York Times tried for years to get Stella to come to run the Styles desk. Somehow, the middle of the pandemic—when most of the Times was still working remotely, when she was unable to meet her team in person—felt like the right time for her?  Rachel Baker: Now I think you can really see the Stella touch in the way they package their stories. Like, a couple weeks ago, when the section ran a cover story titled, “Ozempic vs. Thanksgiving.” The idea sounds almost obvious, but I’d argue that it’s a masterclass in headline writing—it demonstrates a specific Bugbee-an ability to survey the culture and zero in on the thing everyone is thinking about—like when Styles spotlighted the “girl dinner” over the summer. My group texts are still full of photos of “cheese plates for one,” how about yours? Maggie Bullock: Totally. So should we stop yammering so folks can listen to what Stella has to say? Rachel Baker: Let’s do it. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE JOY OF READING — Newspapers are in trouble and that’s not news to you. Print is expensive, the ads moved to Facebook and Google, the classifieds bled over to Craigslist. You know all this. So, hats off to the newspapers that succeed today. And the ones that do, the big ones, the legacy media, have a surprising thing in common: magazines. The New York Times. The Times of London. Le Monde. Germany. Italy. All over Asia. A lot of them produce print magazines as editorial add ons, supplements, not just for reader loyalty and engagement, but as a way to expand inventory for advertisers and a way to diversify business and the brand. That’s what The Guardian newspaper is doing and, being The Guardian, they are also doing it differently than their competitive set. How? By taking an existing feature of the newspaper, The Long Read, and reproducing their favorites in a stand alone magazine. A kind of greatest hits package if you will. Well designed. Very printy. Heavy stock. Debossed covers. So why do it? Who benefits? What is the business rationale behind it? To answer those questions, I spoke to David Wolf, the editor of The Long Read, the section and the magazine, about these topics and, mostly, about the joys of immersive storytelling, the state of journalism today, and the absolute joy of long reads in a world of shortened attention spans and general slop. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK — If you can count yourself among the lucky ones who’ve met Robert Priest in person, any chance you remember what you were wearing? Well, fear not: He does. According to his business partner, the designer Grace Lee, Priest possesses a near-photographic memory of how people present themselves. And those first impressions last a lifetime.  To hear him talk, though, it’s not at all about being judgy. Priest is just naturally consumed with all things visual. He has been since childhood. (He gets it from his mother). To him, design is everything. Priest has dedicated his 50-plus-year career to the relentless pursuit of taste, style, and fashion. And it shows. He has led design teams at all of the big magazines: GQ, House & Garden, InStyle, Newsweek, and Esquire (Twice!) But there’s another side to Robert Priest. He’s a huge sports fan. And designing magazines is his sport. Indeed, like a head coach, he’s hired to win. And the trophies in this case are readership, advertising, circulation, and buzz—and when that’s all taken care of, the design awards start to pile up—they certainly have for him. We talked to Priest about his early days in London, when he—and The Beatles and the Rolling Stones—were just getting started, about why soccer is the real football, and the rise and fall of one of the biggest magazine launches in history, Condé Nast Portfolio. — This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

AN ART BAR FOR EVERYONE — ArtBar is the perfect name for ArtBar magazine and that’s not always the case with the names of magazines. Founded by photographer and filmmaker Sarah Ingram in LA, ArtBar is like a dive bar for artists and their art. It’s democratic in its tastes, and wide in its scope. And fun. Sarah wanted to hang with artists and so she created a space for them. Literally. From a recent editorial: "Art Bar is a hole in the wall where the graffiti artists, punks and poets, filmmakers, philosophers, painters, photographers, musicians, and wild-eyed creatures find themselves at the end of the day to tell our stories and share our work." So. A dive bar. And that bar was going to be in print. And she wanted to get the magazine in your hands no matter where you lived. ArtBar is widely distributed, available on newsstands, and seeks more. Sarah wants to create a community, of course, all editors do, but she also wants to create a community of indie magazine folk. She wants to break things and rules and invite like-minds to her art bar and hang out and see some cool stuff and do some cool things. Think I’m taking the dive bar thing too far? Here’s that editorial again: "We wanted to foster a place to gather, a common ground to share the stories of our human experiences and how they shape our work. This is a place where we can break things, break rules, get our hands dirty." I wasn’t joking. I may joke about a lot of things but not about a magazine set up like a dive bar for artists. Are you kidding? Doesn’t this sound like a place you might want to hang for a bit? Can you tell I love dive bars? — This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025