From inter/VIEW to Interview in eight years.

Interview began as a film paper. English Wikipedia says it was founded in 1969 by the artist Andy Warhol and the journalist John Wilcock, and launched in October 1969 as inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal. The launch cover carried a still from the film Lions Love, starring Viva, and the title nodded to View, the literary magazine Charles Henri Ford published in the 1940s. The launch issue listed Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Wilcock and Warhol as editors. Wilcock already printed a newsprint paper of his own, and English Wikipedia says his name stayed on the masthead until October 1970.

The magazine was made at and around Warhol’s Factory in New York. The Guardian, reporting on 21 May 2018, described Interview as the art, fashion, entertainment and pop-culture journal of downtown New York founded by Warhol in 1969, and said Warhol’s own interviews were printed in an intimate question-and-answer form, with subjects encouraged to talk about the small details of their lives, down to what they had for breakfast.

The early staff learned by doing. Writing in Vanity Fair on 10 April 2017, Bob Colacello recalled that he was hired in the fall of 1970 by Warhol and Paul Morrissey, and that he hired his friend Glenn O’Brien as associate editor. The two sized photographs and pasted up copy in the offices of another paper around the corner from the Factory, and talked newsstand owners into selling what Colacello called an irregularly sized publication. Morrissey had them run Rita Hayworth publicity stills through one issue, and a later issue was illustrated from front to back with photographs of Elvis Presley.

Warhol set few rules, according to Colacello. One was “no more poetry”, after the two editors wrote odes to Elvis. Another was to make all the photographs really big.

The name changed as the paper changed. English Wikipedia lists the title as INTER/VIEW: Andy Warhol’s Film Magazine in 1971 and 1972, Andy Warhol’s Interview from 1972 to 1977, and simply Interview from 1977. Over the same years the coverage moved from film criticism towards fashion, music and the people Warhol met, and The Guardian says the magazine was nicknamed “the Crystal Ball of Pop”.

Colacello, Bernstein, the Brants and Sischy.

The cursive logo dates from 1972. Colacello wrote in Vanity Fair in April 2017 that at the beginning of 1972 he suggested O’Brien be made editor, and that over the next two years O’Brien widened the magazine from film into fashion and music and gave it a bolder, more pop-cultural look. Working with the graphic designer Richard Bernstein, Colacello wrote, O’Brien created the new Interview logo in a flowing cursive script, which was still in use when he wrote. English Wikipedia gives the same pairing and year, and adds that the magazine grew in size and started printing colour covers at that time.

Bernstein also drew the faces. AnOther magazine, in a feature by Miss Rosen dated 27 March 2024, said Bernstein made the covers of Interview from 1972 to 1989, and described the oversized tabloid announcing itself with its signature lipstick scrawl, a script often taken for Warhol’s own hand. Bernstein worked with the editor Bob Colacello, the art director Marc Balet and photographers including Francesco Scavullo, Albert Watson, Greg Gorman and Matthew Rolston, and turned a black-and-white photographic print into a cover with paint, airbrush, gouache and collage. The feature marked an exhibition of those covers at NeueHouse Madison Square in New York, on show until 30 June 2024.

Ownership passed to a family that had invested early. English Wikipedia says the businessman Peter Brant and his cousin Joe Allen bought into Interview in 1971, and that Sandra Brant became director of advertising in 1972. Colacello served as executive editor from 1974 to 1983. The Guardian reported in May 2018 that the magazine was owned by Peter Brant, who acquired it in 1989, after Warhol’s death in 1987; English Wikipedia names the buyer as Brant Publications, purchasing from Warhol’s estate.

The Ingrid Sischy years followed. English Wikipedia says that from 1989 to 2008 Sandra Brant ran the business and Sischy was editor-in-chief, and that the headquarters moved downtown to Broadway in 1990. The Guardian wrote that under the editorships of Colacello and then Sischy the magazine became a more coherent pop-culture publication, and that in later years it focused more on fashion and became a showcase for photographers, art directors and stylists.

A new team arrived in September 2008. English Wikipedia says Interview restarted that month under co-editorial directors Fabien Baron and Glenn O’Brien, with Kate Moss on the cover. Interview closed in May 2018, The Guardian reported on 21 May 2018. English Wikipedia says a company owned by Peter Brant bought the title in August 2018, and that Interview announced a new issue on 6 September 2018. It says the magazine now appears six times a year.

A cursive name, painted faces and big photographs.

A magazine’s masthead can stay in one plain serif and still change in small steps. Jeremy Leslie of magCulture wrote in September 2015 that the Fantastic Man logo is set in Times Roman, that the earlier covers carried a stacked, centred version of it, and that issue No. 21 broke away from that arrangement before No. 22 returned to it. In No. 22 the magazine also introduced Founders Grotesk, by Kris Sowersby, as a new headline sans. Leslie described pages built on strict typographic rules, with little decoration beyond the fonts, and a look based on an approach rather than a fixed set of devices. It’s Nice That described the same magazine in October 2015 as mostly black and white, with rule lines, two columns and long passages of text.

Other titles put more of the identity into the cover image itself. AnOther says the first cover of AnOther Magazine, in 2001, was a photograph by Nick Knight of two young lovers cast as Adam and Eve, and that Jefferson Hack’s foreword framed it as the magazine’s statement for that season. For its fifteenth anniversary in 2016, It’s Nice That reported, AnOther made a limited edition with a 3D hologram cover of Karl Lagerfeld, made by the holographer Rob Munday, alongside covers of other subjects in the same issue. When reading a magazine’s identity, look at how the masthead is set and how often it moves, which typefaces carry the headlines, and whether the cover photograph or the cover object carries the brand.

A signature for a masthead, and a portrait for a cover.

Interview’s identity rests on a word written rather than set. The masthead began as inter/VIEW, split by a slash and borrowing from the title of an older literary magazine, and became a single word in a flowing cursive script in 1972, according to Colacello’s account in Vanity Fair of April 2017. AnOther wrote in March 2024 that readers often took it for Warhol’s own handwriting.

The cover did the rest. From 1972 to 1989, Richard Bernstein’s painted and airbrushed portraits filled the front of an oversized tabloid, AnOther reported. The same feature says Bernstein worked from black-and-white photographic prints by photographers including Scavullo, Watson, Gorman and Rolston, and finished each one in paint, airbrush, gouache and collage, with the editor Bob Colacello and the art director Marc Balet.

Inside, the conversation was the format. The Guardian described Warhol’s interviews as intimate question-and-answer pieces in which subjects were encouraged to talk about the details of their lives, and Colacello recalled Warhol’s instruction to make all the photographs really big. The Guardian added that Interview later became a more coherent pop-culture publication under Colacello and then Sischy, and in recent years a showcase for photographers, art directors and stylists.

The paper and size have changed since the 1970s, and so have the editors, from O’Brien and Colacello to Sischy, Baron and the team that brought the title back in September 2018. The name has stayed the same since 1977, when Andy Warhol’s Interview became plain Interview, English Wikipedia says, and the cursive logo has stayed with it.

For a design guide, Interview shows how a hand-drawn masthead and a single repeated cover method, a painted portrait of one face, can carry a magazine across owners, editors and formats. Compare Fantastic Man, another magazine in this collection, or New York, another title of the city Interview was made in. For this guide we use lipstick red, airbrush pink and newsprint black with an italic serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Interview’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.