Thursday Lecture - David McKendrick

David McKendrick is the Creative Director at Esquire magazine. He jetted in from New York for the lecture and apologised in advance in case he was not quite with it.

David's design career started when he joined Graphic Thought Facility (GTF) straight out of uni in 2000. He describes the job as something of "an extended apprenticeship" and says that he was "a bit of an arse-licker for a while", taking on all the tedious jobs that no-one else wanted to do. This seems to be a pretty good way to get on in a company and it wasn't long before he started to get asked to do some of the more interesting work.

In 2004 David joined North and quickly learned about the particular issues that arise from working with more corporate clients. He was brought in primarily to bring the GTF style to the staid world of the corporations. He showed us a branding campaign that he worked on for a credit card provider called "Seven" - it was pretty unspectacular to be honest yet still took nine months to complete, which is apparently standard when dealing with such big clients. Must have been pretty boring. He mentioned that it was important not to show a client too many ideas as they tend to pick their favourite bits from each one with scant regard for how the whole will hang together. I have already experienced this in the past few years with web design.

From 2006 to 2007 David was hired by Wallpaper* magazine, where he was involved in some editorial design but mainly handled other projects and events that were outside of the magazine itself. This seems to have been a pretty creative time for him and he got to produce some really nice stuff working with large budgets. There was a good cautionary tale from this period too - never write bad stuff as placeholder text in case it accidentally goes to print! This also applies when giving files on your machine names like "website-for-asshole.psd".

In David's instance, a massive client (vodka brand I think) paid for a four page advertorial piece in Wallpaper*. When the first issues came back off the press, the headline at the start of the piece said something like "TEXT COLUMN". Suffice to say the company, who had paid a fortune for the piece, were less than impressed and Wallpaper* had to run the corrected version for free for the next few issues. Having worked in publishing, I am amazed that this can happen as there are so many people that look at the files before they go to print - art editor, production editor and editor at the very least. Despite this I have on numerous occasions seen the word "caption" under a photo in even the biggest newspapers and mags, or a line of "lipsum".

In 2008 David took on the role of Creative Director at Esquire. The magazine was looking tired and dated and was struggling to sell advertising (I didn't realise that it launched in 1939 in the US). David breathed new life into the mag by changing all of the typography as well as the photographic style, while making the whole thing look more structured and thus sophisticated. He also used a variety of paper stocks throughout the mag to further separate the distinct sections.

I personally love what he did with the covers. Each one is unique and playful in its design, while the subscriber-only editions are stripped right back and rely heavily on the strength of the photography. Check out the January 2013 covers for an example:

Many of the covers made interesting use of typography, based on the cover star for the issue. Look at what they did with the logo for the Lewis Hamilton issue:

I also like how playful they were with the barcodes on some issues. The one for the Kaka (Brazilian footballer) issue was particularly nice:

When Alex Bilmes took over as editor of Esquire UK in 2011, David feared that his time at the magazine may have come to an end - new editors often bring in their own teams to put their stamp on a publication. In fact, David had known for some time that a new boss was incoming, so he actually did some of his most daring design work, free as he was from any fear of consequence. As it transpired, he and Bilmes shared a vision of where Esquire should be headed and agreed on a revamp that would make it appear less exclusive in order to appeal to a broader market. There is no doubt that the subsequent redesign was nowhere near as beautiful as the previous one, but at least it looked much nicer than the other "lad mags" that were vying for the same readership.

There was however still some room for good creative design. I particularly like the way that David tends to tailor a design to make it appropriate to a particular feature. For instance, a feature on meat sees all the pull quotes handwritten on those little plastic signs that butchers stick into a joint of meat or pile of chops.

David finished up by sharing a few pearls of wisdom from his design career:

1. Don't get involved in office politics
2. Don't shag anyone at work
3. Make the most of your opportunities (like he did at GTF)
4. Get inspiration elsewhere - try not to look at other design (I hear this a lot)

All very useful I am sure. Shame he was too tired to go for a pint...