NYLON...

I was incredibly excited Monday night to find my first issue from my NYLON magazine subscription in my mailbox. I haven't actually purchased a copy in awhile, so I was definitely looking forward to cracking it open. I've been a longtime lover of NYLON, especially for it's fun design sensibility and use of hand-drawn elements in typography and illustrations, as well as the cut-and-paste look of various collage pieces.

Upon reading the Letter from the Editor in the current issue, I found that NYLON had a new art director - Michael Pangilinan, someone who had been on the design team when it was redesigned in 2003. I was immediately curious. His last name is Filipino and is the same as someone I know, yes, but also because I've always loved NYLON's design. You might even say it's the magazine that's been pushing me to want to get into magazine editorial design myself. So, as a result, I had this crazy idea that NYLON was pushing it to the next level...or something along those lines.

Well, sadly, I was disappointed with this issue of NYLON. Yes, I've been tired of it's design here and there in the past, but for me, with this one, nothing popped. For a magazine that I occasionally picked up just to look through for it's design, it just wasn't fun anymore. Although still well-designed, in my opinion, it's no longer as distinct. I'm not even going to get started on the content, because to be honest, I just haven't been motivated to read much of it yet. We'll see how that goes.


Relishing in disappointment, I googled the new art director. His work is actually pretty awesome. Check it out for yourself. Make sure to savour the classic NYLON layouts. The rest of his design work isn't bad either, and some of it actually seems to resemble the aesthetic of my particular program, which I found quite interesting.

So, I'm hoping that it's just a first issue thing and he'll come back into something more original with the next one. What do you guys think of NYLON, past and present?