2004 AIGA MEDAL
The visual language Woodward developed for Rolling
Stone between 1987 and 2001 was expressive and eclectic,
containing elements both of cool modernism and of American
vernacular such as fat ornamental wood-block display faces,
composition deriving from 19th-century handbills, and a weathered
color palette.
Fred Woodward's illustrious career in publishing design began
tentatively. At Mississippi State and then Memphis State, he
switched majors from journalism to physical education to political
science before settling on graphic design. Two semesters into his
new major, he got a job at a local design studio that led to his
appointment as art director of a regional magazine,
Memphis. In succession he worked for D Magazine
in Dallas, Westward, the Sunday magazine of the Dallas
Times Herald, Texas Monthly, and Regardie's
in Washington DC. Finally, in 1987, Woodward was made art director
of the bi-weekly rock 'n' roll bible Rolling Stone. It was
the job he'd wanted for more than a decade.
Respectful of the magazine's design legacy—begun by Robert
Kingsbury in the late 1960's and continuing with the work of Roger
Black and Mike Salisbury—Woodward reintroduced some original
features such as the Oxford border. This framing device helped
clarify the relationship between editorial and advertising, and it
gave Woodward a defined space in which to let loose the
dramatically choreographed couplings of typography and photography
that have become the magazine's visual signature.
Amongst Woodward's memorable spreads, in which he makes a
typographic response to a photograph, is the one for an Arnold
Schwarznegger profile in which he positioned the headline across a
photograph of the actor sitting in a giant inner tube so that the
tube becomes the “O” in the title “Big Shot.”
Sometimes, however, Woodward let the photography do all the
talking. In the case of the “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young”
headline, no text is used. Instead readers are treated to the
visual joke of a sequence of full-bleed black and white photographs
of the band members in the appropriate order, punctuated by a
page-sized ampersand.
The energy and innovation necessary to keeping a magazine fresh
through almost 400 issues did not go unnoticed. In 1996 when
Woodward was inducted to the Art Directors Hall of Fame he was the
youngest inductee to date.
In 2001 Woodward became design director at GQ magazine.
Within a year his elegant redesign had scooped the Society of
Publication Designers' Magazine of the Year award.
—
“Woodward and his talented staff have set a new standard for
what editorial design can be, in what must be one of the longer hot
streaks in magazine design history. Surveying his work, one is
struck not just by its formal beauty and appropriateness, but by
the sheer virtuosity of its design responses.”
—Michael Bierut, The New Edition of Design Exchange
|