Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!)

NOT THE SAFE CHOICE—Most magazines are not political. Unless, that is, you create a bilingual Arabic-English language magazine about design out of Beirut. Or another bilingual magazine about women and gender—also out of Beirut. Then, perhaps, your intentions are a bit less opaque.Maya Moumne is a Lebanese designer by training who now divides her time between Beirut and Montréal. She is the editor and co-creator of Journal Safar and Al Hayya, two magazines that attempt to capture the breadth and diversity of what we inaccurately—monolithically—call “the Arab World.” Both magazines are also examples of tremendous design and, frankly, bravery.The subject-matter on display here means the magazines have limited distribution in the very region they cover—which is both ironic and the exact reason the magazines exist. That both have also been noticed and fêted by magazine insiders in the West is perhaps also something worth celebrating.Maya Moumne is a designer. Of the possibilities for a better and more inclusive future for everyone, everywhere.[Production note: This conversation was recorded prior to the violence in Lebanon. We send our best wishes to the staff of Journal Safar and Al Hayya and hope they are safe. And mostly we wish for a peaceful future for all.] Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

CHAMPION OF A BETTER FUTURE—Wired magazine feels like it’s been around forever. And perhaps these days any media that has been around for over 30 years qualifies as forever.It has, certainly, been around during the entirety of the digital age. It has been witness to the birth of the internet, of social media, of cellphones, and of AI. It feels like an institution as well as an authority for a certain kind of subject. But what is that subject? Because Wired is not just a tech publication. It never was.Katie Drummond is the editorial director of Wired, a position she has held for just over a year. This job is the closing of a circle in a sense, because her first job in media was as an intern at Wired. She has worked almost exclusively in digital media since, for a range of outfits—many of them shuttered—proof of the vagaries and the reality of media in the digital age.At Wired Drummond oversees a robust digital presence, including video, the print publication, as well as Wired offices in places like Italy, Mexico, and Japan. She says that Wired “champions a better future” … meaning Wired seems like the publication of the moment, in many ways, at the intersection of tech, culture, politics, and the environment. Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

EVERYONE IS A SALESMAN—In 1995, New York magazine declared Martha Stewart the “Definitive American Woman of Our Time.” And, as the saying goes (sort of), behind every Definitive American Woman of Our Time is another Definitive American Woman of Our Time. And that’s today’s guest, designer Gael Towey.But let’s back up. It’s 1982, and Martha Stewart, then known as the “domestic goddess”—or some other dismissive moniker—published her first book, Entertaining. It was a blockbuster success that was soon followed by a torrent of food, decorating, and lifestyle bestsellers.In 1990, after a few years making books with the likes of Jackie Onassis, Irving Penn, Arthur Miller, and, yes, Martha Stewart, Towey and her Clarkson Potter colleague, Isolde Motley, were lured away by Stewart, who had struck a deal with Time Inc. to conceive and launch a new magazine.Towey’s modest assignment? Define and create the Martha Stewart brand. Put a face to the name. From scratch. And then, distill it across a rapidly-expanding media and retail empire.In the process, Stewart, Motley, and Towey redefined everything about not only women’s magazines, but the media industry itself—and spawned imitators from Oprah, Rachael, and even Rosie.By the turn of the millennium, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, as it was rebranded in 1997, included seven magazines, multiple TV projects, a paint collection with Sherwin-Williams, a mail-order catalog, Martha by Mail, massive deals with retailers Kmart, Home Depot, and Macy’s, a line of crafts for Michael’s, a custom furniture brand with Bernhardt, and even more bestselling books. And the responsibility for the visual identity of all of it fell to Towey and her incredibly talented team. It was a massive job.We talk to Towey about her early years in New Jersey, about being torn between two men (“Pierre” and Stephen), eating frog legs with Condé Nast’s notorious editorial director, Alexander Liberman, and, about how, when all is said and done, life is about making beautiful things with extraordinary people.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Mountain Gazette, Commercial Type, and Freeport Press. Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE BRAND CALLED US—In the summer of 1995, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. It came from my guests today, Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, the founding editors of Fast Company, widely acknowledged as one of the magazine industry’s great success stories. Their vision for the magazine was an exercise in thinking different. Nothing we did hewed to the conventional wisdom of magazine-making. Our founders came from politics and activism born in the ivy halls of Harvard. Our HQ was far from the center of the magazine world, in Boston’s North End—“leave the pages, take the cannolis.” And Fast Company was not a part of the five families of magazine publishing. It wouldn’t have worked if it was.  I was one of the first people Alan and Bill hired, and as the magazine’s founding art director, I could tell Fast Company was going to be big. And it was big. Huge, in fact. Shortly after its launch, a typical issue of the magazine routinely topped out at almost 400 pages. We had to get up to speed, and fast.Its mission was big, too. Bill and Alan’s plan sounded simple: to offer rules for radicals that would be inspiring and instructive; to encourage their audience to think bigger about what they might achieve for their companies and themselves, and to provide tools to help us all succeed in work … and in life. Their mantra: Work is personal. The effect, however, was even bigger. The magazine was a blockbuster hit, winning ASME awards for General Excellence and Design. It was Ad Age’s 1995 Launch of the Year. Bill and Alan were named Adweek’s editors of the year in 1999. It even spawned its own reader-generated social network, the Company of Friends, that counted over 40,000 members worldwide. And it brought together an extraordinary team of creatives who, to this day, carry on the mission in their own way—including the founders. Nearly thirty years after the launch of the magazine, Alan is currently serving his second term as the mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bill is the best-selling author of Mavericks at Work, among other books, and continues to lead the conversation on transforming business. We often said that Fast Company was the one that would ruin us for all future jobs. It was a moment in time that I and my colleagues will treasure forever. I am thrilled to be able to share that story with you today.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Mountain Gazette, Commercial Type, and Freeport Press. Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025