kleph
13-03-2006, 12:52 PM
Spy magazine was one of the hip magazines of the late 1980s and early 1990s that created a strange little niche between satire and real news that was to be perfected by internet websites that didn’t even have a world wide web to reside on.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/spy003_thumb.jpgThe magazine was started in 1986 with the tagline “The New York Monthly” but that was later dropped when it began to take on more of a national audience. It was oh-so-New York pretentious but gleefully joyous in going about it’s snooty business. It was ostensibly a humor magazine and produced some of most biting satire I have ever laid witness to in print. While most of their work focused on the media and entertainment industries, particularly those centered in New York, they widened their purview as the circulation area expanded.
From the very start, they had little compunction skewering the rich and powerful just for the fuck of it (although they kept a team of lawyers busy vetting their many irreverent but allegedly true stories). Any of the Kennedys regularly had their necks under the axe and Donald Trump and his then wife Ivana were regular targets - although one got the feeling that the former was for their old money snobbishness and the latter for their new money crassness. The picture of the now-governor of California’s pee-pee (http://www.counterpunch.org/schwarzenekkid.jpg) was a legendary moment in monthly magazine history.
They also came up with the immortal “On Dasher! On Dancer! AIEEEEEEE! (http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/physics.asp)” which looked at the physics involved with Santa’s yearly ride with a gristly glee. This little essay has gone onto Internet fame of some renown. And their regular feature "Separated At Birth?" which posted pictures of similar looking celebrities side by side spun off into it’s own book and countless lesser iterations.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/spy001_thumb.jpgWhile the smart-ass attitude brought them much attention it also won them little warmth in their own industry and severely affected the magazine’s ability to attract advertisers. Almost a decade after the death of the magazine you still see this same approach taken by publication such as The Onion - albiet sans the "meanie" attitude - and replicated ad nauseum by any culture or media-related blog of note, for better and for worse.
But where Spy probably had the greatest impact was in its classically influenced typography and layout. The mixing and matching eras and styles in display and body copy was seen as bold and revolutionary and it’s success in Spy led to it’s ubiquity today.
It was Spy that figured out how to maximize the effectiveness of multiple “entry points” to it’s layout – a strategy now used in the most primitive print publication and any webpage of note.
Those interested in checking out some of the content that was featured in Spy can hop over to the website (http://fawny.org/spy/archives.html) of Toronto journalist Joe Clark who is archiving the entire two decade run of the publication with his own observations and comments.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/spy003_thumb.jpgThe magazine was started in 1986 with the tagline “The New York Monthly” but that was later dropped when it began to take on more of a national audience. It was oh-so-New York pretentious but gleefully joyous in going about it’s snooty business. It was ostensibly a humor magazine and produced some of most biting satire I have ever laid witness to in print. While most of their work focused on the media and entertainment industries, particularly those centered in New York, they widened their purview as the circulation area expanded.
From the very start, they had little compunction skewering the rich and powerful just for the fuck of it (although they kept a team of lawyers busy vetting their many irreverent but allegedly true stories). Any of the Kennedys regularly had their necks under the axe and Donald Trump and his then wife Ivana were regular targets - although one got the feeling that the former was for their old money snobbishness and the latter for their new money crassness. The picture of the now-governor of California’s pee-pee (http://www.counterpunch.org/schwarzenekkid.jpg) was a legendary moment in monthly magazine history.
They also came up with the immortal “On Dasher! On Dancer! AIEEEEEEE! (http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/physics.asp)” which looked at the physics involved with Santa’s yearly ride with a gristly glee. This little essay has gone onto Internet fame of some renown. And their regular feature "Separated At Birth?" which posted pictures of similar looking celebrities side by side spun off into it’s own book and countless lesser iterations.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/spy001_thumb.jpgWhile the smart-ass attitude brought them much attention it also won them little warmth in their own industry and severely affected the magazine’s ability to attract advertisers. Almost a decade after the death of the magazine you still see this same approach taken by publication such as The Onion - albiet sans the "meanie" attitude - and replicated ad nauseum by any culture or media-related blog of note, for better and for worse.
But where Spy probably had the greatest impact was in its classically influenced typography and layout. The mixing and matching eras and styles in display and body copy was seen as bold and revolutionary and it’s success in Spy led to it’s ubiquity today.
It was Spy that figured out how to maximize the effectiveness of multiple “entry points” to it’s layout – a strategy now used in the most primitive print publication and any webpage of note.
Those interested in checking out some of the content that was featured in Spy can hop over to the website (http://fawny.org/spy/archives.html) of Toronto journalist Joe Clark who is archiving the entire two decade run of the publication with his own observations and comments.