From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Magazine art directors are something like chefs. They are rarely seen at work in public, and their genius comes from an ability to blend a variety of ingredients into a new creation that enhances each product. For the past decade, art director Rudolph Hoglund has brought words, photographs and graphics together to increase the impact of TIME stories. Last week we marked Hoglund's 10th anniversary by inviting a group of editors and artists to an informal seminar on the future of magazine design. Says graphics director Nigel Holmes, who arranged the event: "I thought we should reflect a bit on what Rudy has been doing to evolve the look of TIME. It was a way of educating ourselves about the efforts we make every week to invent the best possible way of communicating stories."

Hoglund's tenure has bridged TIME's transition to full color as well as the computer revolution in publishing. A native of Cleveland, he began his career at a newspaper syndicate, hand lettering the dialogue balloons in Alley Oop and other cartoon strips. He served as art director of the now defunct More magazine, a journalism review, before coming here in 1977 as deputy to Walter Bernard, his predecessor as art director. Together, Bernard and Hoglund created the design that remains the basis for TIME's look today. That design began to evolve almost immediately as editors and art directors discovered its flexibility. Technology has made that task both easier and more overwhelming. Our art directors work directly on Macintosh II computers, which allow for variations never imaginable in the days of sketch pads, scissors and pastepots. The basic task, however, has not changed: it is still, as founder Henry Luce described it, to get information off the page and into the minds of readers. Says Hoglund: "I try to give the reader a comfortable sense of continuity in our design, to strip away decorations and distractions and to enrich the voices of our writers, photographers and artists."

As a tribute to his effectiveness in doing that, several freelance artists, who have produced 47 TIME cover illustrations, collaborated on a portrait of Hoglund that was presented to him at last week's seminar. Each artist interpreted a section of a photograph by William Coupon, who took the picture on this page. Clockwise, from the section of the original photograph in the upper right of the image, the artists are: Allen Hirsch, Mirko Ilic, Paul Davis, Seymour Chwast and Robert Giusti.