richardturley

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

[richardturley]

You want to know?

(from 2023) Richard Turley needs no introduction, but we’ll give him one anyways. Whether it’s working as the Creative Director of Bloomberg Businessweek, the Editorial Director of Interview or now founding his own creative agency, Food, Turley brings excitement, energy and the right dose of irreverence to projects.

Rise and Shine

Early bird. I'm usually awake before 7 and up shortly after. I make coffee, empty the dishwasher and begin the long process of getting my 16-year-old out of bed and out the door.

I can walk to work, so as long as it’s not horizontal rain or freezing wind I like to do that. It's about a mile and a half, takes 30 minutes or so, and it’s usually one of my favorite times of the day. I don’t have a set route, just bump around ‘til I get where I'm going. Think a combination of caffeine, walking, the air, the hum of the city, the music on my headphones all help me let go and work through stuff somewhere in the back of my brain. Work Uniform Trying to wear shirts more. Trying. Trying to dress my age, look smart. Not going great. But usually T-shirts, baggy jeans, battered sweatshirt with holes all over or a soft jumper. How I Structure My Day I don’t really. It will get naturally structured around meetings and so forth, but other than those (and a lunchtime walk) that’s it's. Oh and a cup of tea around four p.m. Leave around 6 to 7 p.m. and walk home. I'm in five days a week though, all day, every day. I like the structure of having a working day, going somewhere to work. I like working. Making things. I'm lucky. Playlist Favorites Oh good grief. I listen to music all the time and what I listen to changes all the time. I need music, loud music. Music that you can disappear into. But there is no one favorite. Though if you want a specific piece of music, when I need to get into the detail on something, Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" (I like the 1978 ECM recording, 😉) usually gets an airing somewhere along the way. Tools of the Trade Decent speakers. Good light, good lights. Incense sticks. Laptop. Multiple printers. Scanner. Books and books and books and books and books. Many, many, many old magazines. Pencils, pens and stuff. Dream Studio Place where you can come in and play. Enough tools to be self sufficient. Not fussy. Everyone with their own space, none of that hot desking shit. Really comfy chairs. Has to smell really good. I like incense, woody smells. Plants everywhere. Cork boards on every wall covered with pictures, print outs, scraps, mistakes. Bunch of your friends nearby enough to drop in and have a chat.

[richardturley]

me as child. coulda woulda shoulda

[richardturley]

i'm so talented

[richardturley]

Talking to Alexa Chung

TURLEY: What do you mean by that? What is sexy to you?

CHUNG: Well, this jumper is cashmere, it’s very tactile, and it’s sexy to me if you get the references. If you know that this is based on a Dustin Hoffman thing or if you see that I’m Prince Charles on the ski slopes in ’76 or whatever, our minds meet on that ref and that’s really hot to me. So it’s less literal than, “I can see the outline of your ass.”

TURLEY: Yeah. To that end, what is your feeling on yoga pants?

CHUNG: What are yoga pants?

TURLEY: Essentially a very tight pair of exercise pants. I was at a dinner party the other night and a woman was bemoaning the fact that these garments are often so tight that you’ll be sitting on the subway staring at the outline of a woman’s vagina. Maybe that’s more a New York thing as opposed to a London thing. America has way more of a clone army than England.

CHUNG: I don’t see that much of a difference. Social media has just flattened that. But I find it interesting when people take comfort in looking like other people, because I’ve never wanted to look like anyone else. I’m not saying I’m outlandish in some crazy fairy costume, but there’s a saturation point, and once something’s proliferated too much, I’m rejecting it. The idea that we’re all walking around as clones really scares me.

TURLEY: Yeah, that social media—

CHUNG: Or even that there’s such a thing as good taste—that’s a bummer, too. Anything that mimics something is boring.

TURLEY: There were more distinct waves up until about 2010, and then the internet put the entirety of history and art on our phones and we just can’t cope with all that information or know what to do with it, so we end up copying it, screenshotting it, on social media apps, and so maybe that is kind of what culture is right now. A sort of doom loop.

[richardturley]

Creative Review Interview

Creative Review (blog about corporate creativity) asked me some questions about brand magazines last year. The final piece is paywalled so assume no-ones read it (I haven't either). But here is my bit fwiw.

1. Tell me about the concept behind the Selfridges Yellow Pages zine you worked on and how you brought it to life.

The general theme and most of the ideas came from them; we just shaped it into a magazine for them. Helped them think through what it could look like, what it should feel like, the voice.

We did one for Mulberry a few years back when they launched a new store in New York, which may be a more interesting case study. We worked with Dean Kissick, who commissioned a number of pieces of writing from writers based in the city, which we accompanied with imagery shot by Luisa Opalesky. The magazine wasn’t overwhelmingly product-focused, so it didn’t feel like a hard sell.

Most of those writers have now evolved into significant writers, such as Honor Levy. So it was very good at capturing the nascent scene. Being early on actual trends is so rare for corporations, who tend to need an idea to exist for a few years on a mood board before having the confidence to do it. The commission from Mulberry was a relatively significant fee for those writers, so it was meaningful in doing exactly the thing corporations talk about—sponsoring talented individuals to give them some resources with which to explore their craft—but so rarely actually do.

2. Have you noticed more brands investing in print magazines lately? Any interesting examples?

None that spring to mind.

3. What do you think are the main motivations for brands? And what do you think print offers over digital when it comes to resonating with audiences?

I’m not on that side of the equation to be able to answer that fully. You should ask them. I don’t think the choice you present is a sophisticated viewpoint. Might be helpful to stop reducing forms to this binary print vs. digital.

This is what I think magazines are good for:

Exploring a corporation’s voice. You have to figure out a ton of stuff when you make a magazine. Making a magazine makes you think about that voice all over at once.

Magazines vomit out content, from the finished product itself to the individual images/stories, to the many contributors it takes (who all throw messages out about the project), to behind-the-scenes footage, the production of the magazine, launch events, and so on—pictures, stories, films, writings, ideas—all of these opportunities to help draw attention to whatever you need attention on.

4. Polyester's Ione Gamble recently wrote about how the cool factor of magazines is drawing corporations in but hurting publishing. Do you think she makes a valid point?

No. I think she’s raging against circumstances that wouldn’t allow her project to survive. I do not buy on any level the idea that corporations making (in my opinion, lower creative quality, less interesting publications) is impeding her ability to create a zine or whatever, or is somehow crowding out the market or making publications "less cool."

If you wanted to make a zine or magazine, it’s easier now than it’s ever been. It’s easier to make, cheaper to make, easier to distribute, connect with an audience, find a bunch of like minds to help produce it with you.

If you expect that magazine to pay your rent or that just by virtue of the fact you’ve chosen to impose on the world a magazine and that it should somehow provide a long-term income for you, then you are just fucking crazy. It’s never been like that and is a misunderstanding of the motivation of why you might want to produce a magazine in the first place.

5. Are corporations falling back in love with print just a fleeting trend or part of a longer-term shift, in your view?

I think this is exactly the wrong sort of question and is the one part of the INT piece I agree with—this rolling idea of the death of print. I’ve been doing this job for 25 years or more, forever under the banner of the end of print, obsolescence, trends, shifts.

I don’t think corporations are falling back in love with print. I think a few of them recognize that producing a printed object is the right move for them, maybe for a specific project or campaign. There might be a few reasons for that, such as (but not limited to) a desire for a product that has longevity, or they have a product that has an affinity with the traditions of paper and printing, or a desire to produce higher-quality messages, to sidestep social media, or conversely, making something social media is more interested in (magazines do well on social in my experience, the makers and contributors often want to post about their involvement, and readers often share the object). Corporations might want to make something that doesn’t disappear, reward customers, experiment with their voice over different mediums, attract a different sort of attention, or attract a different sort of audience.

What isn’t a fleeting trend or part of a long-term shift? Every single creative idea you feature on your site is predicated on trying to squirm an idea into the world in a form that will help that idea differentiate itself from its competitors. Sometimes that form is best suited to paper, sometimes (more usually right now) to a piece of short-form video.

Corporations are looking for surfaces on which to express themselves and sell products. To imagine a world where there will only be one way of reaching your customers—TikTok, for instance—is madness. The very opposite is true. Magazines are good for a certain type of client, not for all.

Ask yourself, do you think paper will exist in 2100? If your answer to that is yes, then there will be things printed on that paper and some of those things may be what are currently known as ‘magazines’ and some of those ‘magazines’ might be made by corporations. If your answer is no, then I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I do find it hard to imagine a world without a large array of differently shaped physical objects (some made from paper) rather than one where everything is reduced to digital code being piped into our eyeballs by machines.

[richardturley]

The Dare

[richardturley]

I'm so talented

NUTS