Chatting With Chelsea Cardinal, Art Director at GQ

GQ’s Art Director talks inspiration, the journey of the idea from concept to creation, and what she really looks for in a portfolio.

Take us through your schedule; what is a typical day like? The schedule of each day depends on where we’re at in the cycle for that particular issue. I often say that when you work at a magazine, it’s sort of like everyone is on the same menstrual cycle— even the men; there’s definitely a bad time of the month when everyone is at his or her highest stress level. For the art department, this is the most creatively active time when we’re doing the most intense design work and coming up with the concepts that will go in that issue. This takes up about a week out of every month. The time leading up to this is not only spent planning/assigning illustrations and photography, but also spent protecting the work we’ve done, polishing it, and seeing it through to shipping.

I have a nice balance between collaboration and solitary work most days. There are several meetings to attend, but I’m lucky to also have time to sit and do hands-on design work, which, from what I hear, isn’t the case for some art directors. The GQ art department is structured a little more loosely than other magazines’ art departments in that there’s less of a strict division of roles. Everyone in the art department usually works on at least one feature story and also works on some more formatted front-of-the-book or department pages. With this much diversity, t’s nearly impossible to get bored.

What type of stories are the most enjoyable to design? I think I do my best work, and have the most fun, when I’m taken out of my comfort zone. The work at GQ I am most proud of was done on editorial pieces that I would not have naturally gravitated towards. When I’m dealing with content that I have a pre-existing familiarity with, chances are I also have a pre-existing visual language that I’m likely to apply, and I’ll need to work harder to go beyond the obvious solutions. When the content is unfamiliar, I am educating myself as I design, the solutions are much less predictable, and I will definitely have more fun; usually the work will be better as a result.

At what point in the story process do you begin developing the art concept? The point of involvement for the art department varies greatly from story to story. For the more conceptual art, we are involved pretty early (sometimes before most of the text is written and the story is really just a rough skeletal outline). At that point, we start working closely with the photo department, photographers, and/or illustrators to come up with ideas. For other stories (as often the case with reported and celebrity-focused stories) the design is more responsive. These photoshoots tend to be less conceptual, so there is more room for the design/typography to be expressive. I sometimes think of page design as building a bridge between the photography, the headline (which can also come with it’s own conceptual conceit), and the story. As the designer, you are presented with these elements that sometimes don’t necessarily work together as well as you’d expect, being that they are all parts of the same editorial endeavor, and we have to make them feel intentional, synchronous, and ideally play off each other a bit—hopefully resulting in a solution that feels to the reader like it was the only possible solution.

Where does most of your inspiration come from? Anywhere and everywhere. The natural world, the manufactured world, kids’ books, films, piles of garbage. I try not to look at other magazines very often, just to minimize influence, but obviously I have to look sometimes so I don’t become really out of touch with what’s going on. Music is a really important part of my creative work; I think it helps to get my brain into it’s best “open” state. It also helps with the “closed” state, which is needed for the highly focused and sometimes grueling execution portion of design work.

What are the essential habits and skills you think an art director should possess? Be approachable and nonjudgmental so that everyone around you feels free to voice their weird—and possibly brilliant—ideas. I think it’s really important for an art director to not reject ideas at the concept stage because I deeply believe that execution is 90% of the idea. You can explain an image in words and then show me 10 very different images (some successful and others not at all) that are accurately expressing those same words. Visual ideas need to be tried, not talked about too much. Also, a sense of humor has always been important in the work place and in the work itself. Not taking one’s self too seriously goes along with the sense of humor, hopefully.

What can you not work/live without? Music. Earl Grey tea around 11:00am. Dark chocolate around 4:00pm. A tabloid sized high-end scanner for bringing all my “done-by-hand” design solutions into the digital realm.

What is an industry pet peeve of yours? I’ve noticed that grammar in publishing is getting worse and worse. People have started writing things like: “There is fifty films you must see,” and nobody blinks an eye or bothers to correct it. It’s just sad—sad and embarrassing.

If you are reviewing someone’s portfolio, what things do you look for? A feeling of excitement in my heart. There is a lot of great work being done—beautiful, smart, highly polished work—but you can only really feel it when you are seeing something different and individual that only that person could have made. I love getting that feeling.

Do you have any advice for people trying to break into the industry? Follow-up. I think people are nervous to bother other people by following-up after an initial email. Often the reason I haven’t responded to an email is that I’ve gotten too busy and forgotten, and when I get a follow-up email, I’m happy for the reminder. The worst thing that can happen is the person won’t respond. It’s very difficult to actually annoy someone with too many emails, but it’s easy to forget to respond to one single email in the ocean of emails that some people receive every single day. That’s practical advice, but creatively, I always recommend that young designers try to infuse their portfolios with a bit of personal work—stuff that wasn’t done for as a school assignment or for money. The best designers love what they do—and when you love what you do, you do it whether you’re told to or not. The presence of great personal work is a sure indication that the designer is passionate and knows they are lucky to be getting paid to do what they would do anyway.

What word/phrase/motto do you live by? “Get moving. Your spirits will lift accordingly.” It was in a fortune cookie and now it’s stuck to my fridge with a magnet. I think it’s patronizing, but nonetheless, a good little piece of advice so long as you are telling it to yourself and not someone else.

URL: chelseacardinal.com

Instagram: @chelseacardinal

Amanda Jean Black is a guest blogger at Ed2010, sharing stories from her site onthemasthead.com. When not hunting down publishing’s elite for an interview, you can find the native New Yorker obsessing about style and culture, shopping for designer streetwear, and jamming out to 90′s alt rock.