Richard Turley (Designer: Interview, Bloomberg Businessweek, Civilization, more)

RICHARD TURLEY CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP

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Richard Turley is changing the idea of the magazine. Richard Turley has no idea what a magazine is in the year 2024. And in this sense, he is not so different from you or I.

Richard Turley’s magazines—and there are many—are confrontations, loaded with text, or not, sometimes, but if you ask him, he’s not sure what he’s doing. He claims to be boring. He once said, “I’m a boring, traditional, formalist thinker” and he probably is, but you have to really know your stuff to get where he’s coming from.

Where Richard Turley is coming from is England, yes. He got his start at The Guardian. He was then lured to New York to help revamp Bloomberg Businessweek and his work there made art directors everywhere ugly jealous.

The secret to Richard Turley’s work is the freedom it seems to exhibit. From form. From rules. From common sense. Sometimes even from good taste. But only if you’re stuck up. Which Richard Turley is most definitely not.

Richard Turley once claimed his design philosophy was “to do something unlikable, repellent, horrible, and ugly.” Richard Turley is punk in a way, but mainstream. He’s underground-adjacent. Which just makes him even more punk.

Richard Turley has worked at MTV and ad agencies. Richard Turley designed the logo for one of the world’s largest sports. Richard Turley now runs his own creative agency. And is the art director of Interview magazine. And co-created Civilization. And Nuts International. And Offal. And has designed a literary magazine, Heavy Traffic. And has just redesigned one of the most iconic magazines in existence. Which one? You’ll have to listen to the podcast. 

But just remember this: Richard Turley is a busy man.

I, however, am not Richard Turley. Far from it. 

Nobody is.

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