From the very first hand-stapled issue, sold out of the trunk of a Cadillac back in 1980, i-D magazine popped with the attitude and exuberance of the streets of London. Created by Terry Jones, a former art director for British Vogue, i-D is as fresh faced and as youthful as ever — still featuring a winking smiley-faced model on virtually every cover. As the magazine celebrates its 30th anniversary, those iconic i-D covers, featuring an eclectic who’s who of fashion, music, art and film, and photographed by the leading lenses of the day — from Nick Knight to Steven Klein to Terry Richardson to Jones’s talented children Matt and Kayt — have been collected into a sumptuous new book by Taschen. The Moment caught up with Jones to talk about i-D and its legacy.
It took you 30 years to generate all the covers here. How long did it take you to put together the book?
Physically, we started working this time last year. I remember because I was in Wales and it was freezing cold and I started writing almost like a diary — I tried to do it like a flashback and came back in January with these anecdotal notes, trying to deal with moments I could remember, just flicking through issues in Wales trying to remember stories. It was a rediscovery process. What I found was that there were covers I’d forgotten about and, in many cases, I didn’t know all the stories behind them because there’d be a team working on a challenge to make a cover and they’d go the extra mile to make it special, and I wanted to know all those stories behind those covers. So my diary was very much a flashback, which is why the book runs from now, back. Coincidentally we met up with [the former editor in chief of Vogue Hommes International and Tom Ford partner] Richard Buckley, who took a look at my notes and said he would shape them into something that made more sense because he saw the book as having social significance. So he gave it a seriousness and got me to be a bit more focused.
When you’re going through all these issues, were there things you rediscovered or uncovered that delighted you?
Oh yeah. Loads. Because I don’t try to hold it in my head all the time. Whatever I’m doing now is what I’m working on. There have been moments — when we did the smile book (“Smile i-D”) 10 years ago — when I went through the process of doing that with the layouts. When you go through anniversary-type things like this, it is very much like clearing the wardrobe. And often I find that things that weren’t favorites at the time have become a favorite. When I am asked about favorites, they don’t always stay the same ones. It varies on the day.
As you are going through all this on a molecular level, did it change at all — the way the covers can vary in your esteem — your big-picture thinking about what i-D has meant to you and has been able to accomplish?
It reinforced for me the power of what’s there because of the number of people who have been involved — and not just the photographers. The level of energy that has gone in whenever a cover comes together. I always see it as a massive present. When you get someone like Kate Moss putting time in to do a cover, it is such a massive gift.
The whole tone and perspective of i-D, that personality has held a very definitive place for more than a generation. What is it that has made i-D such a fan favorite with such a devoted readership?
I would say that the base is having something which is a very strong idea, and a cover that engages immediately. Although it is not always a celebrity, but someone who is at the beginning of their career and at that point an unknown. I think that is what’s interesting when you go through the history, 30 years — when Nick [Knight] was doing those covers in the ’80s, nobody knew he would be the star he is. Equally, I’ve got a cover in front of me, which is a girl called Sophie Hicks, but she looks like a boy. And it was the first cover done by David Bailey, May 1984. I didn’t know until I saw Sophie that Jack Nicholson was in the room cracking jokes. Normally she would never smile for a picture but she just couldn’t help herself. Bailey just did the cover for the issue out today. His second contribution to the magazine.
In assessing all this, what makes you the most proud of the work you’ve done?
Continuing after Issue 1. Issue 2 is my favorite because it meant we didn’t stop.
In becoming a veteran of the world of pop culture — do I call you a magazine mogul? — have you learned any essential truths about the way taste and art and fashion and culture works?
I think what’s interesting is that the principle is the same as when I was a teenager just discovering things for the first time, except that nowadays it doesn’t stop at teenagers. You can be my age, 65, and still interested in what music to be listening to. Our generation never got old. I still go back to the vinyl shop in Kingston and invariably I am picking up jazz or bits of vinyl I don’t have that makes up my collection. Sometimes I’ll just buy it for the album covers. I bought three albums just because the covers are so great — “Sticky Fingers” and Zeppelin. I wasn’t so into the music of Led Zeppelin, but the covers were so brilliant. The few by Hipgnosis and the one by Warhol are classics. I have a nostalgia, I suppose, from that side. But I have a generation working in the office now, the majority of whom weren’t born when we started. Their iTunes collection is completely eclectic and across the mix. Which is kind’ve what we started doing with i-D — we used to invent names for subcultures, like the Lower Eastcyclers, amalgamations of two genres. There were rockers and mods, punks and whatever — this is in the early 80s — and we used to invent these tribes that blend these tastes because the best clubs were always like that.
And still the best things are like that — the slivers in the Venn diagrams. Is there anything you look back on and wish you’d done differently?
No, because the truth is we continue to learn. The addiction of magazine publishing — and as we go into the Internet it is the same addiction — it is the addiction for knowledge, and knowledge is something that needs to be discovered and can’t be thrust down your throat. We’d always have this layering, this discovery. The concept of the cover of i-D, with the one eye open and the one eye hidden, is that there are always two sides to a story. The winking eye was not just an anagram of our logo, but it was about the fact that you can’t judge someone on face value. And that goes back to my college days when they tried to throw me out for looking the way I did.
I know you are really attuned to what happens next in the evolution of media. And you are great at anticipating the future. So where do you see publishing and the Internet going?
The whole online, and i-D is just in its infancy — indeed, digital is just in it’s infancy — I believe the print media, the art form, is something I am passionate about, and it has to retain that value. That’s just a personal thing. I never wanted to make print for landfill. It’s always satisfying when I find that someone has held onto their collection or passed it on. I’d like to think we would move more and more in that direction both in print and with the ephemeral nature of the Internet, that will have a different value. I think we are still learning how to do that. I’m a big fan of the iPad. I like it more than my iBook because I can touch it and move it. I’m very excited about that technology. When I can start playing it like a piano, then I can work creatively with someone (because I am not a technician) on that.
Now you’ve just done a partnership with Lacoste to design a flashy pair of kicks. Is that the direction we can expect to see you go in from here?
I just did that because I am a big fan of [former Lacoste designer, now of Hermès] Christophe [Lemaire]. They designed a shoe — I’m a Converse man — and the fact that they let me produce something in green crocodile skin made me very happy. Also I just did a sweater for Pringle where we had one of our stencil cover images knitted. If it’s the right product — if Patagonia came to me and said, “Oh how about doing something” —then it would be fun to see what it’s like. I think there are people who’ve grown up with the same sensibility I have. If Trish and I decide that we want to have a group of i-D hotels around the world with a good promoter, why not? If somebody starts a form of transport that can get us across oceans without pollution, I would totally promote it. The i-D time traveler is probably far away yet. Maybe Apple will come up with that.
Marc Newson will design it for you.
I think putting Marc together with Steve Jobs to come up with a time traveler — that would be a good challenge.
I can’t wait. Now I’m now off to pick up my green croc Lacostes.
Enjoy that.