A series of articles focusing on the television industry in New York magazine’s July 6, 2020, issue. The series makes prominent use of Obviously across its large range of widths, for everything from the section titling to pull-quotes, article openers, lists, deks, drop caps, etc.

Various Egyptienne Bold Condenseds have long been central to New York magazine’s design aesthetic, dating back to the issues that co-founder Milton Glaser art directed and continuing in contemporary print and web editions with readily-available digital interpretations.

For the magazine’s 50th anniversary issue (October 22, 2017), design director Tom Alberty and deputy art director Chris Cristiano expanded their typographic palette by commissioning a new, extra-narrow typeface in the style.

For the custom “NY Egyptienne Compressed”, XYZ Type’s Ben Kiel looked back to Schelter & Giesecke’s Halbfette Egyptienne (circa 1880) to return to the roots of a typeface which is generally seen through the lens of the PLINC version. An adapted version of custom typeface was publicly released under the new name Ballast, and Kiel shares more about the magazine’s commission in a journal post.

October 27, 2019 edition cover

Contemporary issues of New York magazine make liberal use of off-the-shelf Egyptienne Bold Condensed in print and web editions, tying in with the tradition that goes back to the early days of the magazine in the late 1960s.

“The cover of the July 22, 1968 issue of New York Magazine celebrated New York City as the epicenter of Jewish food. It also marked the first cover appearance for the Magazine’s iconic food and restaurant critic, the Underground Gourmet.” — pixels.com

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Egyptienne Bold Condensed was a frequently seen typeface on covers as well as interior pages of New York magazine. The version in use is Photo-Lettering’s Egyptian Bold Cond (PLINC-4028), a phototype adaptation of Lettergieterij Amsterdam’s 1955 reissue. Milton Glaser, who co-founded the magazine with Clay Felker in 1968, was president and design director until 1977. Walter Bernard served as Associate Art Director.

August 16, 1976 edition cover

March 17, 1975 edition cover

A bright, surreal and slightly disturbing magazine cover for New York magazine, art directed by Thomas Alberty, with illustration by Robert Beatty. Both the illustration style and the typeface – Amelia – seem to make a direct reference to the paperback covers that were designed by David Pelham for the Penguin Books science fiction series in the early 1970s.

New York's August 5-18, 2019 issue’s front page headline “Ivanka To City: Drop Dead” is done in tribute to New York Daily News’s headline for Gerald Ford's speech to the National Press Club “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” Railroad Gothic is used in place of Daily News Gothic for the headline. In place of New York Daily News’s supporting text Tempo Condensed, the similar Futura Condensed is used, with support of Futura and a bit of Franklin Gothic for small print.

The feature is based on 60 interviews with Ivanka Trump’s friends and colleagues, which also form the basis of Tabloid: The Making of Ivanka Trump, a new, ten-part narrative podcast series from New York that Grigoriadis has been reporting for six months. - New York

Creative direction: Tom Alberty
Photo director: Jody Quon
Artwork by Gluekit.

Nymag.com:

In New York Magazine’s July 10–23, 2017, issue cover story, deputy editor David Wallace-Wells presents a landmark bird’s-eye-view survey outlining our terrifying best understanding of where our planet is headed, absent aggressive action. The lesson is clear: The planet is simply not prepared to reckon with the scale of the climate threat, or even really to comprehend it. Though it’s relatively easy for us to imagine rising seas, we can’t bring ourselves to consider all the ways in which climate change will imperil human life globally, including the fact that the equator and tropics could become literally too hot for human activity by 2100; that we could lose as much as half our food production to feed a world with twice as many people; that we may come into contact with diseases trapped in arctic ice that haven’t circulated since before humans were around to contract them; and many more.

The article (avalible online here) cased big debate and responses from most sides of the tables. The cover of course references The Whole Earth Catalog, the often riffed on seminal publication which sparked what some like to call “hippie modernism”.

Illustration: Justin Metz

The opener page is almost exclusively set in Hobeaux Black, stacked and justified, with a rainbow gradient. Parentheses and quotes/apostrophes are taken from lighter weights of the 5-style family.

Just in time for OH no Type Co.’s first anniversary, founder James T. Edmondson’s “dreams are coming true, thanks to the brave designers at @NYMag.” The Culture Pages of New York’s Fall Preview issue 2016 are a celebration of his Hobeaux.

Credits: Thomas Alberty (Design Director), Randy Minor (Art Director), Chris Cristiano (Deputy Art Director), Miranda Dempster (Strategist Art Director), Stevie Remsberg (Art Production Manager), Aaron Garza (Designer).

The section titles are in gigantic Hobeaux Black, cropped and partly superimposed, sometimes rotated. The colored numbers and the authors’ names feature the Bold weight.

The pilcrow (¶) is a space-efficient means to mark paragraph breaks.

Hobeaux drop cap! Fun fact: “Loser” was released in 1993, just like Whale’s “Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe”.

Detail from the calendar. New York’s regular typefaces are Miller and Verlag.

Detail from a column in the Pop section

This year’s Fall Fashion issue of New York magazine makes great use of Atlantic Light, a preliminary cut that is part of an upcoming typeface family designed by Jan Horčik, to be released with Heavyweight.

Design credits: Thomas Alberty (Design Director), Randy Minor, Miranda Dempster, Christopher Cristiano, Aaron Garza

Illustration by Philip Hays

At New York (1980–1981), I had the idea the of reviving the Silk Stocking style. I did a search for available versions of the De Vinne, aka Elzevir, aka French Oldstyle of the late nineteenth century. Settled on Romana, which we had set on the VGC Phototypositor or the Mergenthaler Linotype VGC. This seemed to evoke the era.

Today, for small sizes, I would say the Bitstream version is the best.

Rough scans of the magazine showing Romana on a series of covers and inside stories can be found on Google Books.

“This is a wonderful pre-release use of Domaine Sans Display. It perfectly suits the “fashion-forward” nature of the issue, delicate harlines, stacked caps and super-tight-to-overlapping tracking. Very interesting indeed. I particularly like the ‘EARTHENWEAR’ page, the subtle colour gradation and overlapped type is striking.” — Klim Type Foundry

The 2014 holiday gift guide from New York magazine is basically a 164-page love letter to Windsor, with virtually all headlines and display type set in it.

The Nov 17–23 2014 issue of New York magazine is a classic example of how that publication manages to employ a wide variety of typefaces and employ very large/bold type but maintain a close attention to detail in the body type. Throughout the entire issue, the type palette varies hugely from serious workhorse types like Miller to fun retro types like Windsor and New York’s signature Egyptienne — all handled with care and consideration.

The extremes of the type spectrum represented within the issue include a giant full-page single glyph on one hand, but also well-spaced and well-printed body type on the other hand — some of it even knocked out of rich 4-color black backgrounds with surprisingly clear and readable results.

This issue is of note for those interested in typography because the cover story about emoji is composed with emoji symbols inline with the normal body type. Those who missed the original newstand offering can order back issues directly from New York magazine.

Miller Display and Lake Bell for New York Magazine.

The Cut uses Miller Headline to bring you the most up-to-date information on everything from fashion to politics to entertainment.

Subscriber cover

Ever since Tom Alberty became the Design Director of New York earlier this year, the cover typography has sprung to life. Alberty was previously the Art Director at GQ, a magazine that may use more fonts than anyone else. 2012’s New York covers have mostly stuck to the their core typefaces: ITC Franklin, Egyptian Bold Condensed, and Miller. However, Helvetica makes an appearance every so often, mostly for special issues, and Futura has started to show up, inside and out.

The Fall Preview is Alberty’s most energetic cover yet; it’s arguably the magazine’s most playful since 2004’s major redesign, led by Luke Hayman.

Newsstand cover

Ed Gothic and Ed Roman, from House Industries’s 5-font Ed Benguiat set, are unexpected but pitch perfect. By avoiding the quirkier sides of the Benguiat family (notably, Ed Interlock), the whimsy here is under control. It generates enough excitement without being goofy. Also, it avoids the trap of becoming a poster — something many city magazines fall prey too — by injecting it’s core sans serif, ITC Franklin, and by keeping the type sizes in check.

To see several years of New York covers, check out their issue archive.