Debra Bishop on Making Magazines

0:00From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the Design Thinkers podcast. Design Thinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Since the year 2000, the RGD has been bringing together visionaries from a range of disciplines to explore creativity and the design process. Join our host and RGD president, Nicola Hamilton, as she sits down for casual and candid conversations with Design Thinker speakers, both past and present. This week on the Design Thinkers podcast, I'm joined by Debra Bishop, an award-winning creative director and one of editorial design's most influential voices.

0:39Over the past four decades, Debra has shaped the look and feel of some of publishing's most iconic titles. From her early days at Rolling Stone, to launching magazines and Martha Stewart, to serving as design director at the New York Times. For the last eight years, Debra has brought her bold, playful vision to the New York Times for Kids, a monthly print-only section beloved for its inventive layouts, striking typography, and deep respect for young readers. The project published its final issue at the end of August, though Debra will continue her work at the Times. This interview was recorded before the official announcement came out, so you won't hear us talk about the closure, but you might sense a little mourning in the conversation.

1:20What we do talk about in this episode are the joys and challenges of redesigning magazines, what Debra learned from design legends like Paula Sher, Fred Woodward, and Robert Priest, and how she has continued to expand the possibilities of what publications for kids, women, and niche audiences can look like. We also explore why she still believes in the enduring power of magazines, even as the industry continues to evolve. Whether you're a designer, editor, or simply someone who's ever loved a great magazine. This episode is packed with insight, honesty, and a whole lot of design wisdom. I want to take it back for our audience and sort of start at the beginning because I think it's always a little bit of the story that they don't get on stage at Design Thinkers, but what actually drew you into editorial design in the beginning?

2:09Debra Bishop:In the beginning, I came to New York. I was 24. And I came here with my boyfriend, who is now my husband. Anyway, we went to the School of Visual Arts. And I was hired, trying to make this quick, was hired by Paula Sher to work in her studio. and I didn't really want to design editorially. I wanted to be like Paula. I wanted to design record covers, but at the time, Paula had spent, you know, 25 years designing record covers at CBS and that was so cool. And, um, so I didn't really want to do editorial, but I remember her saying to me, oh, you'd be so good at editorial. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that.

3:09Debra Bishop:We were doing book covers and we were doing some corporate identity. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity. By that time, the record business was really going down or shrinking. Shrinking would be a good way to describe it. So we weren't doing the beautiful album covers. We weren't doing those anymore. It was, you know. And I was given the opportunity to work at Rolling Stone with Fred Woodward. And that seemed like it wasn't that it was editorial. It was that it was the subject matter. that I was drawn to, you know. It was record label adjacent. Yeah, exactly. And so that's really why I went there.

4:07Debra Bishop:And I left Paula because, you know, that was my first job right out of school. Anyway, this was a wonder. And Paula, was Paula one of your instructors at SVA? Yes, yes. She hired me out of her class. I was so lucky. Anyway, I went to work with Fred and And those years, I mean, I was absolutely petrified, you know, because it was editorial, because in those days we had to spec type and get the whole story to fit. And I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know anything about editorial grid systems or anyway, I remember being so nervous, my hands like practically completely locked up. It's so interesting to think about like editorial design is technical.

4:57It's a very, very technical genre of design to begin with, but to think back to those days when it was even more technical.

5:03Debra Bishop:Yes. And, you know, it was a weird culture to work at as well, where, you know, we were always in a hurry. It was biweekly, which isn't as bad as a weekly, but it was still, you were on a tight timeframe. So there, there was no fooling around. Um, luckily I had good hand skills. Like I didn't have, that wasn't a problem for me, the paste up and the, you know, all of that. Um, but specking the type was terrifying. Anyway, I got through it and I got through the early stages and I really started to enjoy, you know, editorial. And what's strange about it when you come from the studio at that time was this idea that you're sort of reacting to art on one side.

6:01So you were kind of, you know, designing horizontally. and you know that used to drive me crazy but um you you sort of develop your own way of like

6:14Debra Bishop:dealing with that and you know one of the ways we did it was we would turn the pages upside down so that we could design a poster or which was perfectly right for the audience and sort of the content a challenge turning turning type turning a page um is every editor's nightmare and every designer's dream. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, I've been very lucky in that, you know, you work on, you know, projects where you have the creative freedom to do that. And I think that that world is shrinking. So, yeah. I mean, we used to do things like turn both pages, you know sideways so that we could get you know create a poster we were experimenting with a lot of different things we would experiment with the design going around the page you know what I mean sort of like flip to the other side I very often the young designers would have to do the sort of right hand openers at Rolling Stone and I actually loved doing those because I thought they were more like book covers, which was what I knew how to do.

7:32Debra Bishop:It was a lot less about a text-driven design system when you were doing those kinds of things. But I will say that when the thing that I learned the most at Rolling Stone, and I learned a lot with Paula, obviously, but what I learned the most was creating packaging and design systems for special sections. And that's really the way you learn how to start redesigning magazines and designing anything for that matter because and and it editorial involves so many different aspects of design it's text is grid systems it's display it's uh it's it's really packaging and that's that's what I love to do I often talk to my editorial design students about how much effort they have to put into an editorial design class because it is all of those genres, all of those skills pulled together.

8:33It's everything. It's all of it, all at once. Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot to learn. Yeah, and a lot to pay attention to, right? Like a lot of little pieces to think about. And I think the best magazines are the ones where they do pay attention to all those little details.

8:48Debra Bishop:Well, I have been known to be too detailed. I can see this. I'm thinking about some of these like very type driven pages. Was it in Moore where you had the opener that was just text, all kinds of different type? I'm trying to remember what that page was called. I want to say it was called a notebook. book. There were many of the, oh yeah. Well, there were many of those, you know, as an editorial magazine designers, the most important part of the magazine that you need to create a system for what would have been, things are changing, would have been the front of book because that is really going to, it has to be super flexible and flexibility is actually the main drive.

9:33Debra Bishop:And also because you don't know what ad is going to be sitting there next to your design. So it needs to be flexible. It needs to separate, but it also, because it's where it's situated, you know, front of book, it's up front. It sort of drives the look of the whole magazine. So the, the well, usually the way I would design would have be the looser kind of, you know, needs to feel on brand, and you'd work within a system of fonts, maybe only two or three. But you could do a lot more, have a lot more freedom there to design that, which is, for young designers, actually harder because you're not following a format.

10:23Debra Bishop:But and it's real hard to do really well if you don't have a very, very tight, rigid system. But anyway, the front of book is really what drives the whole look of the magazine. Yeah, it's often where the typography works the hardest too, right? Because you have all these like smaller, smaller pieces that all end up on the same page on the same spread. Okay, so you go from from Paula to Rolling Stone under Fred. So you've worked for two legends in your first two gigs out of school. And then where? I think four years into Rolling Stone, I had my first child. I got married to my boyfriend, who's also Canadian.

11:05Debra Bishop:We came here together. His name is Eddie Guy, and he's an illustrator. And we got married. And then I guess four years into Rolling Stone, I had my first child, Caitlin. and I mean things have changed since then but I think it would have just been too much I mean the amount of the hours that we would put in and I think I just felt like I needed a break in many ways I think back and go wow you should have just stayed there but things were different this would have been 1994. And even in 1994, it was harder for women to like take breaks and then come back. Well, and so much changes at a magazine in an amount of time away, right?

11:56Debra Bishop:It was a lot of work and a lot of overtime to create what we were creating at that time at Rolling Stone. I loved it. But anyway, I felt that I needed a break. So I was home for a year And then after that, I worked at House and Garden, which was a Condé Nast publication with Robert Priest, who's another legend. Yes, absolutely. Working at Condé Nast was like very different from where I'd worked before. It's much more corporate. Yeah, I felt like I didn't really fit in. And I also started to see what Martha Stewart was doing out there in the world. And I was a big fan of Martha Stewart's. I bought her cake book early on.

12:52Debra Bishop:I've always really loved shelter content or home content. I'm kind of an amateur interior designer. You know, I probably, in retrospect, could have done that as well if I had chosen that. Anyway, I was seeing what she was doing and I was absolutely fascinated with the magazine when it came out. And so I reached out to, I'd never done this kind of thing before. I don't think I'd ever had to really interview before. I called I cold called Gail Towie who I actually had never met and I just said I I had heard on the grapevine but I didn't really know I said I heard you're looking for somebody to do blah blah blah anyway she was quite indignant and angry because apparently Condé Nast had been sort of scooping up the photographers she'd been using and putting them on contract and she was really mad about it.

13:59Debra Bishop:So I got, I kind of got this like bad vibe. Anyway, she agreed to see me because I, because I turned around and said, oh no, no, I'm, I'm calling because I heard that you had a, that you might have an opening and I would be interested kind of thing. So I interviewed with her. And then before I was hired, I had to have an interview with Martha Stewart and herself. Wow. And yeah. And oh my goodness, I was so nervous. And she looked at my portfolio. Now imagine my portfolio is full of Rolling Stone work, right? All of share work, heavy type, uh rolling stone heavy type house and garden heavy type like you know and it that was the antithesis of what they were doing really they were all about like paring down the typography even lowercase headlines all lowercase headlines at that time so um she just looks at it and she was like, well, you can't do that here.

15:13And I was just kind of in shock.

15:17Debra Bishop:I don't even actually remember. I said something like, oh, I know, but I can design. Anyway, I got the job, but I didn't really fit in at Martha Stewart very well because I was such a type designer. I mean, They had a lot of art directors who had gone to RISD who were very crafty and creating content with their craft skills. And I was very much, obviously, a type designer, editorial designer. But I worked there for 12 years and I, you know, created, you know, I did a lot of the branding and started new magazines. kind of never working at the big magazine, the big Martha Stewart Living. But that was actually probably a good thing.

16:16Debra Bishop:No pun intended. So you, yeah, you started, you helped launch at least three magazines there that I know of, Martha Stewart Kids, Baby, and Blueprint. Were there more? Well, the first project I worked on was Martha by, Martha's catalog was Martha by Mail. And I have to say, it's one of my favorite jobs that I ever had. We were designing products, which was so much fun. So what we would do is living would do like, for instance, a beautiful story about genealogy, and they would create, they would have five of the editors design, you know, their own genealogy chart. One would be made out of this beautiful pear wood stick.

17:05Debra Bishop:And one of them, like Eric Pikes, was this gorgeous vintage sort of chart that, you know, had been in his family. Anyway, so we would take those stories as inspiration and then create beautiful products. Not everything, but that was my favorite part of, you know, not all the products were developed from editorial. but that was my favorite part of it. And we would shoot the whole catalog. We would do all the collateral. And yeah, that was really fun. So that was my first job. And then I had told Gail, you know, if you ever do a kid's magazine, I'd really, you know, like to do that. You know, you know, sign me up.

17:56Debra Bishop:And yeah. Was that the moment of time you were in in life? Like what, what made you want to do a kids magazine? Yeah, I guess it was because when I started Martha by Mail, I think my eldest daughter, Caitlin was, I think she was two. And so it was, it was, you know, I was really big into kids fashion and, you know, inspired by children's books, vintage ones. And yeah, I just somehow I felt that that would be something that I would like to do. And yeah, I mean, honestly, my interests and what I'm working on have been strangely aligned over the years. Yeah. So I started Martha by Mail. Then I was giving these amazing opportunities to help Gail start up Martha Stewart Baby, which was like a dream.

18:55Debra Bishop:We had one advertiser in the Gap who was doing wonderful, wonderful advertising campaigns. So it felt like editorial. And they were using, I can't remember his name, but this wonderful photographer from Italy. And he was so good. And so the whole, we had beautiful paper to print on. It was like a coffee table book. and you know that you know gail and i and the team pretty much would come up with the lineups and like you know where where things had been so much more conventional in the past where the content would be you'd be given the content and have to react to it where here we are actually creating content.

19:43Debra Bishop:It was very scary in the beginning. Yeah, I believe it. It was. But then you start to love it and you get kind of addicted to it. You know, as an example, you know, you're creating the story because it starts with the visual because it's how-to content. I, you know, wanted to do a story. We had these 101 type stories, how-to stories that we would run in Baby. And one of them was how to swaddle a newborn. Of course, I had this young baby at the time. So it really was in line with your life? Oh, well, right before, I had my second child, right between Martha by Mail and Martha Stewart baby. I was actually expecting, you know, right up to the last second of the first issue.

20:36Debra Bishop:And anyway, so she was, yeah, she was my model for the swaddling. And so the plight of every editorial designer, art director, editors, children is that they must appear in the magazine at some point in time. This podcast is made possible with the support of the Association of registered graphic designers. Through RGD, Canadian designers exchange ideas, educate and inspire, set professional standards, and build a strong, supportive community dedicated to advocating for the value of design. The RGD is Canada's largest professional association for graphic designers. The association's membership of more than 4 ,000 people includes firm owners, freelancers, managers, in-house designers, educators, and students.

21:21Members work in the design disciplines engaged in developing effective communications. That includes editorial design, motion, brand, packaging, environmental design, user experience, information design, and so much more. The RGD runs numerous industry events and initiatives, including Design Thinkers, Canada's largest annual conference for designers, Creative Earners, Canada's comprehensive salary report for creatives, and awards programs for branding, design educators, emerging designers, in-house design and students but you don't need to be Canadian to become a member find out more at rgd.ca membership and join us in our mission to build a graphic design profession that is broadly valued for its contributions to life commerce and society my kids were always in

22:10Debra Bishop:my friends kids and you know yeah roping your friends into things people in the editorial People in the editorial design world, you know, because Martha didn't want, she wanted, she didn't want models because she felt that that child modeling can be, it's not great. It's not a great enterprise. So we wanted, you know, real kids. We wanted, not that they're not real, but you know what I'm saying. We would use our own children, a lot of kids from the other parents. But at that time at Martha Stewart, I think I was one of the few parents that was there, other than my boss, Gail. And then later, everybody was having babies.

22:57Debra Bishop:So as an example, my youngest daughter, Izzy, I went to an expert swaddler, a nurse, and I'm trying to remember. And I learned how to swaddle her. And then we went to the photo shoot, and I swaddled her. And then we ran the story. It was a front of book story. So that's just, you know, one example. But Martha Stewart was just so wonderful because you had this incredible team behind you. It wasn't, you know, this was, I'm making it sound like it was all me, but it wasn't. I mean, you know, if you wanted to do an entertaining story, like maybe you were doing a baby shower, you know, you'd have the style department would work with you.

23:49Debra Bishop:You'd have a whole team and you'd come up with, you know, what were you going to serve? What's the entertaining idea? What does the decor look like? Like what does the, I mean, you were storytelling, but creating a real situation, whether it's a party, it's a real party. If it's a, you know, it's an event, you're not just going to the shoot. I actually loved just still life stories because like whether it was embroidery or, you know, a food, because it wasn't throwing a party. Yeah, yeah. Less people. Well, you know, it's really nerve wracking to throw a kid's birthday party once every issue was nerve wracking.

24:34You work on Baby, you eventually do get to work on Martha Stewart Kids.

24:39Debra Bishop:Yeah. And so, well, we, Gail and I were going to, I mean, Gail thought we're going to just do, use the template that we created with the beautiful script Mimimus font. We're going to just use that for kids. And Martha came along and said, no, no, no, no, no, no. It needs to be a completely different magazine. So by that time, I had three weeks to come up with a different magazine. So that, kids kind of evolved, you know, graphically, you know. it kind of, and it evolved in part because we had to, there had to be something about these magazines, not so much baby, but kids that was different than living, you know, we couldn't really compete with them because they were the cash cow, the, the big, you know, so it was very tricky doing that magazine.

25:44Debra Bishop:And the great news was that it could be different, right? Because when you work for a big company like Martha Stewart, you need to color within the lines as the creative director. You know, there are certain like visual cues, there are certain photographic styles, there are, you know, typography, all of that, that sort of needs to feel on brand. But because the sort of smaller projects needed to have sort of their own voice, and sort of not sort of take away from the big mama, you know, that gave a little bit of artistic license, and the ability to innovate, which is what I like to do. I like to, you know, I like to work within the lines and the confines, but I like to push just a little bit.

26:42It makes me think a little bit about you've done Martha Stewart Kids and now doing the New York Times Kids, which are very different beasts. But I'm so curious how much of the New York Times Kids section came from some of your early thinking at Martha Stewart Kids. Were there ideas that you got to realize later on.

27:00Debra Bishop:I mean, yeah, of course we, I use, you know, I use what I've learned. And with the New York times for kids, I think a lot of people were thinking in the sort of realm of tiny times, like make it the same brand as the New York times, but easier to understand, like information that was easier for kids. Yeah. Which isn't what you did in the end. It's not. And that's not what I wanted to do. You know, I wanted to, and I would say we, because I have worked very closely with Caitlin Roper on this from the beginning. We wanted to create its own destination because, because of the, you know, what I know about starting a stepchild for a very big, you know, big, big brother is they don't, they don't do very well.

27:58Debra Bishop:And so I kind of felt like, well, something better might be something that is its own destination that can sort of speak up. I think a smart New York Times reader is smart enough to read the big paper. Like when I was young, I used to read National Geographic. We all did. We didn't really need the kids version. We might not have read it. We definitely looked at the pictures. But yeah, you're engaging with it and absorbing what you can. Yeah. I mean, it needed to be its own destination. That's what we were thinking. And it needed to be something that we would want. Any project for kids, you don't have to talk down.

28:44Debra Bishop:It has to be appropriate. It has to be understandable. But visually, it doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to put type on an angle, although I've done that. But, you know, it doesn't have to have all the kid cues that we use. You can innovate. Yeah, it doesn't have to be childish. Yeah. In fact, there's more opportunity to innovate than there is with an adult project. But I think that the only downside to working on kids content is really having to follow the expectations. You know, it's what's expected. No, it doesn't have to be what's expected. Well, I think you've also like spent so much of this chunk of your career to sort of shifting those perspectives for audiences, right?

29:31Like a lot of the audiences you've designed for have been audiences that I think sort of mainstream media often forget about or have like very specific stereotypes that they lean into. So women over 40, parents, kids, those spaces. Yeah.

29:49Debra Bishop:And it's just like, it's just, it's hard when you're first going into these things. But when people can see that you can reverse the perception of what it could be, then it's like, everybody wants to work on it. You know, people love it. It's like, wow, you know. Moving away from the norm is scary in the beginning. So people tend to move away from it. Well, yes. I mean, the people that you're working with tend to draw their inspiration from what's gone on before, right? I mean, that's typical. But I think the biggest advice when you're doing any kind of startup or taking on something that needs help is just you don't have to follow.