Eye Magazine

There is little that Priest and his design partner Grace Lee do not know about editorial design. In a garlanded career Priest has launched numerous magazines, won a sheaf of awards and co-founded the institution that is American Illustration. He moved from London to New York (via Toronto) at a time when an art director shaped a magazine as much as the editor.

His design and editorial skills encompass a particularly North American mix of high seriousness and playfulness. His signatures include: the use of smart illustrators who bring their intellect to the work, rather than just a style; a layered use of type to impart extra information and visual cues; and a lavish, dynamic visual approach that gives creative collaborators the ability to go beyond the everyday.

Grace Lee, a successful magazine designer, first worked with Priest on an Oprah Winfrey magazine. He then recruited her to be the art director of Condé Nast Portfolio, a foray into the business publication sector for that company. There, looking back for inspiration to Fortune magazine, they created a modern masterpiece that did not survive in the wake of the financial crash.

Their partnership as Priest + Grace followed, launching and redesigning magazines for a variety of publishers. ‘We had the idea in 2009 that we wanted to do something that was ours – we wouldn’t have to wait for the phone to ring. In a way it was a reaction to all the restrictions that we’ve had in the past.’

Almost the only subject area not represented in Priest’s CV was sport, and so they decided to launch a global football title, with Priest as editor-in-chief and Lee as creative director.

The world of football magazines, they discovered, is full of competently designed club products and a substantial body of titles such as FourFourTwo and WorldSoccer, which fulfil but rarely exceed, their brief. Priest + Grace’s baby, Eight by Eight – based on intelligent thinking and exquisite visuals – looks like the kind of magazine given wings by massive budgets and large editorial teams. However there is no deep-pocketed publisher providing a time-rich environment here. How do they pull it off? ‘Because we’ve been around so long, we know how to do things,’ Priest explains. ‘There’s really only me and Grace doing this, with one editor, and freelancers who help us out on crunches. Grace happens to be lightning fast, and working together we’re quite efficient.’

That’s some understatement. Twice nominated as ‘Magazine of the Year’ by the Society of Publication Designers (it won in 2015), Eight by Eight’s ambition is ‘to tell stories through excellent journalism; aggressive, modern design; and the best illustration and photography.’ They see their readers as ‘smart and inquisitive, seeking an understanding of the game’s unseen narratives and delighting in its complexities.’

Design often outstrips the writing in the independent magazine sphere, but with a stellar line-up of sports journalists from around the world, delivering substantial editorial, Eight by Eight is well rounded while remaining light on its feet. Priest finds the editor’s chair a novelty. ‘I finally understand the difficulties editors face on a daily basis! And our great goal is to improve the writing issue by issue.’

Visually, there is a real joyfulness about the typography – a dazzling pop to the headlines, and a detailed perfectionism to the handling of the running text. It is hard to pull off this kind of flamboyant page design. There is no place to hide and a lot that can go wrong, but Lee’s brilliance is sure-footed.

Eight by Eight has built a strong roster of illustrators who can capture a famous face: ‘It’s becoming extremely important to have artists who can get as close to perfect likenesses as possible. I see so many illustrations that aren’t quite there. Other than that, we give illustrators a lot of freedom.’ Sometimes the work demands a realistic feel so that unphotographable concepts (a dummy in the mouth of Argentine footballer Ángel Di Maria) can be made to work.

Alongside the portrait and editorial illustrations, the use of narrative comic strips harks back to one of Priest’s first jobs, with art director David Driver at Radio Times, working with one of the greats of the genre, Frank Bellamy, artist of Dan Dare, hero of the boys’ comic, Eagle.

Now Columbian illustrator Diego Patino has taken up that position, with added grit, often bringing his own take on the stories. ‘The comic idea is always in the back of our minds, to make the magazine very entertaining without making it juvenile,’ says Priest. ‘In a funny way, we design the magazine as a sort of modern comic.’

They have also just collaborated with Instagram on a project documenting the Italian team, Juventus. As I talked to them via Skype, Grace Lee was moving around in the background with Eight by Eight football shirts, applying badges to them using a heat press. They are produced by Avery Dennison, badge supplier to the world’s biggest clubs. ‘We collaborated with them, and they made some badges for us. So they do Real Madrid’s badge and Eight by Eight’s!’

I asked Priest what the name means. ‘The goalposts are silent witnesses to the most dramatic moments in the game. They stand eight feet high by eight yards long: Eight by Eight.’

Martin Colyer, writer, designer, judge on the V&A Illustration Awards 2018, London

First published in Eye no. 96 vol. 24, 2018

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues. You can see what Eye 96 looks like at Eye Before You Buy on Vimeo.