Into the Goss

I’m watching shimmery pools of nail polish and smudges of eye shadow spin around a page like constellations circling a celestial object; in this case, it’s the bright, shining star, Emma Stone, who’s endorsing one of these products as among the season’s “20 Best Beauty Products.” There are artfully-cracked cakes of concealer, spurts of CC cream, and swipes of mascara all moving as if in a dance, choreographed by the cursor of one of the five art directors who work at People magazine. After consulting several mastheads for the weekly issues, the franchise issues, the special issues, the book-a-zines, and the digital properties, five is just my best guess. But depending on who you ask, the answer to a question as seemingly benign as, How big is the design department?, could be 10, or 16, or more than 36, if you count photo, digital, and video. Or the answer might be “Not nearly big enough,” or “I have no idea. See all these desks? I don’t know what department this even is.”

People is big. With one of the largest magazine readerships in America, People has gamely laid the table for our insatiable appetite for the lives of others ever since it was founded in 1974. It’s a seductive, if not always stylish spread, designed to appeal to the widest possible audience and to be devoured as quickly as our fingers can flick the pages. The layouts invite us to tuck in and take a bite without feeling too guilty about what we’re consuming. Advertisers are eating it up, too—annual ad revenues regularly top a billion dollars. At a time when print advertising is supposed to be dying a slow, silent death, how do they pull this off?

People is also the country’s oldest celebrity entertainment magazine, so it’s had a few decades to establish itself in the hearts and homes of its devoted readers. As someone who’s previously only thumbed through it at the nail salon (and only if it was the last thing on the rack, and only if no one was looking), People has never been in either my heart or my home. I lumped it in with the other happy, shiny covers at the supermarket checkout; the ones full of low-grade celebrity photos and exclamation points at the end of every headline. In the past few weeks, however, I’ve easily spent more time with the magazine than I have in my whole life combined. I have also gone to meet the people of People to observe them in their natural habitat, and I’ve discovered that I was wrong, that we were all wrong, and that there is a very clear reason why they are the biggest and the best-selling business in the print media game. I figured out how they do it, and I’m going to tell you, but you won’t like the answer: standards. Ethical standards. Moral standards. And yes, design standards.

I will soon learn that Ms. Stone’s immaculate complexion has not, in fact, been photoshopped, that neither her hair nor lip color will be altered in any way (a practice that’s more common than you might think) before this “20 Best” beauty page lands in the mailboxes of the magazine’s 3.5 million subscribers and reaches its total, worldwide, digital, social, and IRL audience of over 90. Million. People.

With great circulation comes great responsibility, and despite what its rainbow-bright color palette and excessive punctuation might imply, People takes that responsibility seriously. It doesn’t alter its photos. It doesn’t change the background or add fake ones. It doesn’t crop out bodies, rearrange them, or move them closer together to suggest relationships that don’t actually exist. It doesn’t slim anyone’s figure or remove anyone’s wrinkles. It’s very protective of children’s right to privacy, and it absolutely does not stand for stalkerazzi. Some readers are actually disappointed by how respectful People is. When other magazines go low—printing sensational rumors, half-truths, and outright lies—People sticks to the facts. Which makes designing it all the more challenging: How do you make facts go down like candy that tastes just as sweet to your retired grandpa, your single-and-lovin’-it gal pal, your working mom, your stay-at-home dad, and your celeb-obsessed 6th grader?...