BS: I just remember so clearly looking forward to seeing the magazine cover every Sunday. I didn’t even know you really well at that time.

RA: The Times was pretty gutsy too and must be given lots of credit. They took a great risk when I assigned Roger Law, the English satirist to create his wicked caricatures of some political figures from the late ’70s. They were meant to be a series of covers. Roger constructed magnificent 3D puppets of each politician. One of Jimmy Carter in overalls in a peanut field looking like a cracker, another of Ronald Reagan with his six-gun shooters blazing sitting in a western boot looking crazed, and former Governor George Wallace sitting in his wheelchair on a porch covered with a confederate flag draped over his knees. They let me publish them without compromising the artist’s point of view in any way.

BS: So you switched gears and went to Vanity Fair. It hadn’t been published for 50 years when they brought it back and you started in 1981.

RA: That has a tragic personal backstory connected to it. Bea Feitler had been hired to design Vanity Fair and was diagnosed with cancer soon after. It was kept pretty quiet. She produced a wonderfully fresh prototype and all seemed well. No one knew how serious it was until the end. She took a trip down to Brazil to visit her family and never returned. It was pretty devastating. Not only a great professional loss but a great personal loss as well.

BS: Did she go there to die?

RA: I don’t think so. But that was another reason why when I was suddenly called at home one Sunday morning by Alexander Lieberman to take over Vanity Fair, I hesitated. I was emotionally conflicted. I had just left The Times to art direct House and Garden at Condé Nast. I was ready to concentrate all my efforts on creating a complete makeover of the magazine. They wanted something elegant, modern, and sophisticated. I wanted to leave the pressure of The Times behind me and start with a clean slate. Like clearing one’s palette with a fine wine. No such luck. I had only a few months to develop some of my ideas and whoosh—I was at Vanity Fair [another Condé Nast publication], having to create a new redesign for Tina Brown in three weeks. I had my first taste of what the corporate world was about, and I was just a little pawn.

BS: And what was your relationship like with Tina Brown?

RA: We had met before, and worked well together when she was an editor-at-large at Vanity Fair while Leo Lerman was editor. He was fired the Condé Nast way—without warning or dignity. Tina was swiftly made editor-in-chief and in his chair in a day! She asked me to stay on and become her design director, which she had obviously discussed with Alex beforehand. She is no doubt one of the most talented editors of our time. And she was at the right place at the right time. It was the opulent ’80s … the age of “The Donald,” the Reagans in the White House, celebrity trials. Everything was glittering on the surface and tinsel underneath.

We were never pals, but we enjoyed duking it out professionally from time to time. Mostly she won. Her instincts were pretty infallible when it came to knowing that Hollywood was our new royalty. She mixed high and low culture into a heady brew. One part journalism, one part gossip, and one part serious writing. She drove the art department completely crazy. She would make us prepare as many as three issues’ worth of work for every issue before she finally decided on the content. It’s true that if she didn’t have Sy Newhouse’s deep pockets to fund her whims, the magazine wouldn’t have survived. It lost a ton of money for many years. But she did eventually turn it around to become the queen bee of publishing with her own trunkload of press clippings trailing behind her.

BS: No question she was the beginning of what made Vanity Fair what it is today. Are there any current magazines that you think are well designed?

RA: I don’t look at that many. But I do feel W magazine is consistently publishing daring portfolios throughout the year and blurring the lines between what is considered a good fashion photograph and what is considered an art photograph. I think books have become the magazines of the 21st century. There are too many of them used as vanity publications for talented photographers who have deep pockets themselves, but I welcome them anyway. Eventually the cream will rise to the top.

BS: What about Fabien Baron’s Bazaar? Did you look at it?

RA: Of course. I liked what he did with Italian Vogue even more. Truly innovative. I think Fabien’s a great designer. Some people criticize his signature look—I don’t. He has infallible instincts, knows what he wants and gets top editors and advertisers to do his bidding. And they pay him huge sums for the privilege. That’s major. Also his work as a package designer is in a class by itself. His Issaye Miyake bottle alone is a thing of great beauty. Sleek and modern.

BS: Being a salesperson is a huge part of the job and they don’t teach you that in school.

RA: I’m always amazed at how many bright magazine people who work with images are often as clueless as someone from the outside. It astonishes me how many word people pretend to understand what you’re about but really don’t.

BS: There is something about what we do. Some clients love to play the role of art director.

RA: The famous phrase from most editors is “Do you really need all that white space?” or “Couldn’t you just put in one more paragraph, add more words to the headline?”

BS: I have heard that many times. It’s like in Amadeus when the king tells Mozart that there are too many notes.

RA: Here’s a bewildering story I still have trouble telling. When I worked with the gifted Susan Sontag on Annie Liebovitz’s book Women, I wanted to put a small title on the page opposite her opening essay. She didn’t like it there, because, according to her, “that’s not where it belongs.” I was stunned. Nothing I said could change her mind. The deeply sophisticated Susan Sontag who has written books about photography, who represents intellectual freedom, and was herself a respected iconoclast suddenly became a flaming visual conservative. Who would have guessed?

BS: What we do is a two-part job. We have to invent it and then we have to make sure it gets made.

RA: That’s what I mean. If I had to do it over again, I would have been an editor because in the end they have more power. More power means you can get things done. Of course for those in a class by themselves, like Fabien, the influence and clout he demonstrates has almost earned him equal power among his clients and editors. But I’m sure he has lots of war stories to tell as well. And when I think about it, I’ve had a pretty good run of it myself. So I shouldn’t complain too much.

BS: I know you’re working on the super-sized Peter Beard book for Taschen now [coming out in fall 2006], but you were doing advertising for a Club Monaco campaign a while ago, right?

RA: I was very proud of that campaign. And truth be told, the dirty little secret is it was the easiest design project I ever worked on that also paid nicely. Now I “got” what those other advertising art directors were getting away with over the years and keeping quiet about. I was ready for my share. Did you know after I completed that successful campaign photographed by the maestro himself, Richard Avedon, I didn’t get one phone call, one job offer, one nibble from anyone anywhere? That was a huge disappointment. But you just have to keep “pressing on,” as Dick often said. And so I have.

BS: That’s really surprising. It was beautiful work. Do you have a philosophy about what makes good design?

RA: There really isn’t any good design or bad design, only what works or doesn’t work.

BS: What makes it work?

RA: Trust your instincts, change the rules to suit yourself, embrace accidents, keep looking at everything, know your subject, appear fearless—even when you aren’t—and most importantly, work with an enlightened client or collaborator as often as you can. Don’t think too much, let it go. Basically I believe in simple design that appears effortless, but it takes a lot of work to achieve.

BS: Well, you have to be open and receptive to the possibility of those accidents.

RA: Unpredictability is a gift, especially in creative hands. Designing a magazine is a little like designing a face. No two faces are alike but each has the same essential structure—two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Each magazine, even each advertising campaign, pretty much has the same ingredients. Whether it’s fashion, beauty and accessories, or home, architecture, and lifestyle, what you must do is constantly rearrange and reinvent the relationships, pay attention to the content and context, pay attention to the time you live in, pay attention to what is newly creative and who is creating it. If you do that it will work and live on as good design.