It was first launched in May 1980 in London by Nick Logan, the British journalist who had previously been editor of New Musical Express and Smash Hits. Having narrowly survived a near closure in the early 1990s following the award of libel damages against the magazine, it finally ceased publication in 2004 as a result of dwindling circulation. Frequently referred to as having "changed culture" and credited with launching Kate Moss's career as a supermodel, the magazine was the subject of a number of museum exhibitions after its demise.
In April 2019 The Face was relaunched online at theface.com by current owner Wasted Talent, which also publishes the magazines Kerrang! and Mixmag and acquired rights to the title in 2017 from Bauer Media Group. The first physical issue of the new era was published on 13 September 2019.
Proposal
Logan left the NME after five years as editor in 1978 and launched Smash Hits for Emap, the magazine division of printing company East Midlands Allied Press.
In the autumn of 1979, with Smash Hits' circulation at 166,000 copies[1] Logan proposed a new magazine – "a well-produced, well-designed and well-written monthly with music at its core but with expanding coverage of the subjects that informed it, from fashion and film to nightclubbing and social issues".[2]
When Emap's directors passed on the proposal, Logan and his wife decided to go it alone and invest £3,500 savings into the new title, which he named The Face.[3]
The Face Magazine helped contribute to many areas of art and creativity, sharing ideas amongst the readers. They encouraged people to be themselves and in turn, the expression of one would contribute to the world of art and fashion.
1980s
Initially working out of the Smash Hits offices in Carnaby Street, central London, and using the off-the-shelf corporate entity Wagadon, which he had formed for his business relationship with Emap, Logan published the first issue of The Face on 1 May 1980.
Featuring a logo designed by Steve Bush, with whom Logan had worked on Smash Hits, and a portrait by photographer Chalkie Davies of Jerry Dammers of The Specials on the front cover, this issue sold 56,000 copies.[4] Sales levelled over the next six months, but a fillip was provided by alliance with London's burgeoning New Romantic scene via articles written by young journalist Robert Elms with photographs by Derek Ridgers, Virginia Turbett and others.[5]
The publication of lookalike rivals such as New Sounds, New Styles and Blitz and the launch of i-D magazine confirmed Logan had established a new publishing sector.
He moved into the first of a series of offices of his own in central London. Subsequently, Logan recruited young designer Neville Brody as art director in 1982, placing the magazine ahead of the pack visually. Brody drew on such early 20th century art and design movements as Constructivism to create a stark new visual language which would define certain visual aspects of 1980s Britain.[6]
The style pages of The Face meanwhile set the pace for the wider fashion world, particularly those produced by the Buffalo collective, led by stylist Ray Petri and including photographer Jamie Morgan.
In the 1980s Logan's innovations at The Face included the November 1983 "New Life in Europe" issue, a co-production with nine continental European magazines including France's Actuel, and the 100th edition of September 1988 which incorporated a tri-fold on the front which featured the covers of every magazine published till then.
1990s
In 1990, shortly before being awarded the inaugural Marcus Morris Award for magazine innovation, Logan was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw and forced to take a nine-month sabbatical. On recovery he became editorial director at Wagadon, with Sheryl Garratt[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] as editor of The Face and Dylan Jones editing companion title Arena.
Bicker's decision to make the unknown 16-year-old Kate Moss "the face of The Face" gave the supermodel her first exposure, particularly on the front of the July 1990 issue entitled "The 3rd Summer of Love".[14]
In May 1992, a High Court jury found in favour of a libel claim by Jason Donovan that The Face had implied he was gay when he was not, and awarded the pop performer £292,000 in damages and costs.[15] The singer later reduced the amount to £95,000 to be paid over several months and a fund was set up for readers and supporters.[citation needed]
Under Sheryl Garratt's direction with assistance from her successor Richard Benson and other writers including Lindsay Baker, Ashley Heath, Gavin Hills and Amy Raphael, The Face reflected the developments in club culture, fashion and what became known as Britart as well as musical genres including grunge, jungle and Britpop.[citation needed]
By this time the magazine's art direction and design team of Stuart Spalding and Lee Swillingham were showcasing such emerging photographic talents as Inez and Vinoodh and Norbert Schoerner.
The biggest selling issue of The Face was published in October 1995. With Robbie Williams on the cover, it sold 128,000 copies.[16]
After Logan launched new titles Frank and Deluxe, Richard Benson became editorial director of Wagadon in 1998. His successor as editor of The Face was Adam Higginbotham who in turn was succeeded by Johnny Davis in spring 1999.
Sale to Emap and closure
In July 1999 amid plummeting circulation figures and aggressive competition from such titles as Loaded and Dazed & Confused, Logan sold Wagadon to Emap, which absorbed The Face, Arena and Arena Homme + into its lifestyle division
While Benson did not join Emap, Johnny Davis and Ashley Heath were among the team who made the transfer. In 2002 Davis was succeeded as editor by Neil Stevenson, co-founder of the Popbitch gossip website. By the spring of 2004 monthly sales had slipped to 40,000 copies and Emap consumer division head Paul Keenan announced the magazine's closure.[17] It was reported at the time that Jason Donovan had formed a consortium to look at buying the title from Emap in an effort to save it, but the plan came to nothing.[15] The final issue was published in May 2004. Rights to the title passed to Bauer Media Group when it acquired Emap in 2008.[18]
Acquisition by Wasted Talent Media and relaunch
Rights to the title The Face were acquired from Bauer Media Group in 2017 by UK publisher Wasted Talent Media, publishers of Kerrang! and Mixmag, which announced plans to relaunch the magazine.[19] In April 2019 The Face was by current owner Wasted Talent, which also and acquired rights to the title in 2017 .
In March 2019, Wasted Talent's Jerry Perkins, who was a publisher at Bauer and its predecessor Emap, announced that the title would be relaunched online at theface.com in April 2019 and return as a print quarterly in late summer 2019.[20] The first physical issue of the relaunched magazine was published on 13 September 2019 with a choice of four covers featuring contemporary celebrities Harry Styles, Dua Lipa, Rosalía and Tyler, the Creator.[21]
Legacy
In 2011, The Face was added to the permanent collection of the Design Museum, London.[22]
British Design From 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age (2012).[24]
Club To Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s (2013/14)[25]
The Story of the Face
The history of the magazine during Nick Logan's ownership 1980–1999 is told in Paul Gorman's book The Story of the Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, published by Thames & Hudson in November 2017.[26]
Barney Bubbles was an English graphic artist whose work encompassed graphic design and music video direction. Bubbles, who also sketched and painted privately, is best known for his distinctive contribution to the design practices associated with the British independent music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. His record sleeves, laden with symbols and riddles, were his most recognisable output.
Kerrang! is a British music webzine and quarterly magazine that primarily covers rock, punk and heavy metal music. Since 2017, the magazine has been published by Wasted Talent Ltd. The magazine was named onomatopoeically after the sound of a "guitar being struck with force".
Q was a popular music magazine. Originally published in print in the UK from 1986 to 2020, it was inactive from 2020 until 2023. In 2023, Q was revived as an online publication. It was founded in 1986 by broadcast journalists Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, who were presenters of the BBC television music series The Old Grey Whistle Test. Q's final printed issue was published in July 2020, but began posting new articles to their website in 2023 before being fully relaunched in 2024.
Drapers is a business-to-business magazine and website covering the fashion retail sector. It was founded on 6 August 1887 to cover the women's clothing retail trade, but today spans the whole fashion retail sector, including wider retail issues such as digital transformation, technological advances and the management of supply chains.
Smash Hits was a British music magazine aimed at young adults, originally published by EMAP. It ran from 1978 to 2006, and, after initially appearing monthly, was issued fortnightly during most of that time. The name survived as a brand for a spin-off digital television channel, which was later renamed Box Hits, and website. A digital radio station was also available but closed on 5 August 2013.
Crash, stylized as CRASH, is a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer, primarily focused on games. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress. It was relaunched as a quarterly A5 magazine in December 2020 with the backing of the original founders.
Brian Murray Fagan is a British author of popular archaeology books and a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Thames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, and popular culture.
Select was a United Kingdom music magazine of the 1990s. It was known for covering the indie rock and Britpop genres, but featured a wide array of music. In 2003, The Guardian called Select "the magazine that not only coined the word Britpop, but soon came to define it."
AW is a monthly track and field magazine published in the United Kingdom by Athletics Weekly Limited. The magazine covers news, results, fixtures, coaching and product advice for all aspects of track and field, cross-country, road racing and race walking. Between 1950 and 2020, it was called Athletics Weekly and was published weekly.
Nick Logan is an English journalist, editor and publisher.
Paul Gorman is a British-Irish writer and curator.
Pop is a British fashion magazine co-founded in 2000 by Ashley Heath and editor Katie Grand. The initial creative directors for the magazine were Lee Swillingham and Stuart Spalding. Pop is published bi-annually.
Richard Evans is a graphic designer, art director and illustrator. He studied fashion and textile design at Nottingham School of Art and graphic design and illustration at Leicester College of Art.
Ted Polhemus is an American anthropologist, writer, and photographer who lives and works on England's south coast. His work focuses on fashion and anti-fashion, identity, and the sociology of style and of the body with the objective to explore the social and communicative importance of personal expression in style. He has written or edited more than a dozen books, and has taken many of the photographs that appear in them. He was the creator and curator of an exhibition, called "StreetStyle", at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. One of his most popular books is "Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk", which he originally wrote as the book for the exhibition. Ted Polhemus wrote an updated version of Streetstyle, which PYMCA published in 2010. In 2011 he published a revised and expanded version of his early book Fashion & Anti-fashion. He also explored the social and cultural impact of the baby boom generation, culminating in the 2012 publication of BOOM! – A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-22.
Paper is a New York City-based independent magazine focusing on fashion, popular culture, nightlife, music, art, and film. Initially produced monthly, the magazine eventually became a quarterly publication, and a digital version was made available online at papermag.com.
Thomas Steven Roberts was an English designer and fashion entrepreneur who operated prominent independent retail outlets including pop art boutique, Mr Freedom, and the 1980s decorative arts and homewares store, Practical Styling.
Susan Bright is a British writer and curator of photography, specializing in how photography is made, disseminated and interpreted. She has curated exhibitions internationally at institutions including: Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago amongst others.
Iain McKell is a British fashion, portrait and social documentary photographer. He has specialized in photographing British subcultures since the 1980s and his work has been published in L'uomo Vogue,i-D and The Face.
Shoom was a weekly all-nighter dance music event in London, England, between September 1987 and early 1990. It is widely credited with initiating the acid house movement in the UK. Shoom was founded by Danny Rampling, then an unknown DJ and record producer, and managed by his wife Jenni. The club began at a 300-capacity basement gym on Southwark Street in South London. By May 1988, its growing popularity necessitated a move to the larger Raw venue on Tottenham Court Road, Central London, and a switch from Saturday to Thursday nights. Later relocations were to The Park Nightclub, Kensington and Busby's venue on Charing Cross Road.
References
↑ Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club & The New Pop, Faber & Faber, Dave Rimmer, 1986. ISBN978-0571137398
↑ Paul Gorman, The Story of the Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, Thames & Hudson, 2017. ISBN978-0-500-29347-8
↑ p17, The Story of the Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, Paul Gorman, Thames & Hudson, 2017. ISBN978-0-500-29347-8
↑ p20, The Story of the Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, Paul Gorman, Thames & Hudson, 2017. ISBN978-0-500-29347-8
↑ pp22-27, The Cult With No Name, Robert Elms, The Face, November 1980
↑ No More Rules: Graphic Design And Post-Modernism, Rick Poynor, Laurence King, 2003. ISBN9780300100341
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