Of the infographics, many of which were collected in the 2021 book An Answer for Everything, Webb adds: “Some of them are artworks in their own right”. “We’ve done infographics right from issue one and Chris has been the designer of pretty much every page”, Webb says. Tate created an infographic that takes on the somewhat daunting task of reflecting the breadth of Delayed Gratification’s content to date. With issue 50, as the run of the magazine approaches 13 years, the editors asked Tate to design the cover artwork for the first time, realising that no one would “know the brand as well or be as passionate about it”, Webb says. Issue 50: “Doing everything we tell people not to do” “Apart from that it’s beautiful and it looks nice on the news stand or on someone’s shelf”. Whereas with the art, we can just literally do anything we want, without having to justify it at all.” Issue 15, with cover art by Ai WeiweiĪs for why art, unlike the illustrations favoured by some other publications, Tate says: “With illustration, you can take it on a tangent, but I think there is always quite literal interpretations there. Even more generously, he says, “he also let us produce limited edition prints of the first cover”. “It’s kind of luck that we managed to get him for the first one, and then he said yes to do it for the 5 th and 10 th birthday ”, Tate says. Other covers have come from Morag Myerscough, Jen Orpin and Ai Weiwei just to name a few, but the artist who has created the most for the magazine is American artist Shepard Fairey, whose work Tate describes as “a great kind of documentary of the era”. “We approached him and he was a fascinating interview, but also created this cover, called Where there’s a will, there’s a way – which really spoke of it.” Issue 2, with cover art by Hassan Massoudy “That was right back in early 2011, so the Arab Spring was just starting”, Webb says. “They match the tone of the magazine, but it’s nice to have a break from that occasionally – like when we had Grayson Perry’s cover, which is really intricate, very involved work”, he adds.Īnother highlight, suggests Webb, was the cover of the second issue, by Iraqi calligraphy artist Hassan Massoudy. “I think for me the ones that really work well have big, bold, graphic colours”, says Tate – such as Michael Craig Martin’s metronome image for issue 16. Issue 1, with cover artwork by Shepard Fairey
“A lot of people are quite surprised when they find out it’s different artists each time”.
And despite each one being produced by a different artist, “they feel like a part of something”, Webb says. While at the beginning this process involved “a big wide trail”, Webb says, now the team is quicker to identify an artist who might work well for a cover. “I tend to go off and look for a huge amount of artworks, create a whole load of dummy covers and send them off to Chris or Rob, who’s the co-editor of the magazine”, he adds. When there’s a particularly big event – Brexit, Trump, or Covid-19 for example – the cover might look to reflect the mood, “but most of them we deliberately try and keep quiet and abstract”, Webb says. Left to right: Art director Christian Tate and co-editors Marcus Webb and Rob Orchard “We wanted something that was totally different – just a nice, beautiful cover”. “When I came to design the magazine, Marcus and Rob explained to me that they wanted something on the cover that didn’t have to tie into the news, because that always sets the agenda of being a lead story”, says Tate. “I guess we’re probably a weird magazine in that the covers don’t relate at all”, Tate says. Across its 50 issues, each cover of the quarterly print magazine has featured a work by a different artist, who is also interviewed in the magazine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team went for a different approach. A selection of Delayed Gratification covers “One of the ideas we were talking about was like a Bayeux Tapestry to capture the months like a tableau, and have some things being passed from one cover to another, so you could stack them up and make this big tapestry of life.”Īfter presenting this idea to art director Christian Tate, he explains, “Chris immediately said ‘that’s probably a bit complicated’”.
“We had all these high-falutin ideas when we started the magazine”, says Delayed Gratification co-editor Marcus Webb.
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