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Story of a Cover: Stuart Geddes

JA November 30

The December edition of Meanjin, which features work by Alex Miller, Elizabeth Jolley, Christos Tsiolkas and Helen Garner among many others, is special retrospective edition both in terms of its content and its design. Here, Stuart Geddes (who, as founder of Chase & Galley, has been at the helm Meanjin’s redesign over the past three years), tells us about his vision – paying tribute to both the new and the old, and why small magazines are rare and vital things.

meanjin69

Meanjin Vol 69.4



Tell us about this edition’s cover – what’s the significance of this particular image, and why did you decide to use it?

This cover re-uses the March 1942 cover, but it’s also the original cover from the first issue in 1940. This four footprints cover (one footprint each—putting their best foot forward apparently—of the four founders) was re-used quite a bit over the first several years of the magazine. Given our take on the design of Meanjin over the last few years, it seemed a fitting way to honour the origins of the magazine, and its own re-use of its history.

The other lovely thing about this cover was that we were able to secure (with the help of good friends KW Doggett fine paper) a beautiful Wedgewood blue, laid (texture) cover stock that we printed on with just a single colour. This humbleness of approach seems interesting now, when four colour printing and cellosheen coating is ubiquitous to the point of being actually less expensive than a single spot colour on an uncoated paper. When Meanjin was started, and for many years afterwards, the extravagance of four colour printing was something that only existed in American advertising budgets, not in little magazines. I really enjoy the counter-intuitiveness of decisions like this, that something can seem more special through doing less.

M1

Meanjin 1955



The December edition is a special retrospective issue, celebrating the best of Meanjin’s past content – are there any nods as well to the best of Meanjin’s past design and layout?

This edition was a complete joy to put together. When we redesigned Meanjin three years ago, we were very consciously looking backward as well as looking forward. For example, the masthead now is a quite close adaptation of the typography from Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski’s 1966 covers (reproduced on p189 of this edition). So with this issue, I got a real sense of unveiling what I’d been up to – I got to not only reproduce lots of previous covers, but also whole articles in their original typesetting, with the various textures of the original paper they were printed on. This historicism, or, more precisely, the use of historical standards and norms to produce something new, has been one of my ongoing trains of investigation with Meanjin, and the 70th anniversary edition has been the clearest articulation of that idea.

Phillips

Orignal typesetting of A.A. Phillips' ‘The Cultural Cringe’



Tell us about this edition’s In Colour section, which features a history of Victoria’s little magazines.

Placing Meanjin contextually amongst a small selection of its many peers seemed like an interesting project, and something Ray Edgar and I had been kicking around for some time. As a publication and publishing-focused designer, the legacy of activity that these magazines capture is really thrilling to me. From my (comparatively) short experience at ‘Is Not’ magazine, one of the most enjoyable things about doing this article was hearing first hand accounts of the energy and labour poured into making these magazines. The communities of thought and practice that surround these journals and little magazines are rare and vital things, and they are capable of making subtle and important things happen.

M5

Meanjin 1964



Finally, what’s the last book, publication or artwork you loved, and why?

There are things I fall in love with daily, but given the opportunity I thought I should mention a more enduring romance. For the last decade a journal called Dot Dot Dot, initially published out of the Netherlands and more recently from the US, has been a touchstone for me, in terms of intelligent writing around (not specifically about) design. They really captured my own ambivalence about design and they way it is normally practiced and discussed. Ambivalence in an urgent sort of way, if that makes any sense. I say captured because they have recently announced their last issue, which makes me sad, but at the same time, they are doing it for the right reasons – with new projects in mind that are an evolution of their ideas.

1942

Meanjin, March 1942


 

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