(Re)Direction: Fiona Hayes, From Magazines to Arts Education

For our third installment, I spoke with art director and educator Fiona Hayes. Her 35-year career—much of it in magazine publishing—had its start in rural Ireland, where magazines such as Smash Hits and The Observer Magazine were her connection to the world. True to her philosophy “do interesting work in interesting places with interesting people,” Hayes has been a magazine art director in New York, Paris, Mumbai, Munich, Moscow and London. She is currently consulting and educating a new generation of designers and photographers.

Tell me a little bit about how your path originally took you to magazines. Was this a field you were always interested in?
I’ve had a lot of great jobs over the years, but one thing I’ve never had is a plan. And I don’t have goals. I tell students goals are fine for companies but not for people. What if your goal is to be art director by the age of 30, and it doesn’t happen? You’ll feel like a failure. But what if it does happen — how do you top that? Is it all downhill from there? Instead of goals I have a philosophy: do interesting work in interesting places with interesting people. It’s always served me well.

I always knew that I wanted to work in “art” in some way, but I remember very clearly, when I was about 11 or 12, my grandmother telling me I couldn’t be an artist because artists don’t make any money (I think her sister had married a painter, and she wasn’t impressed). Looking back, you’d never say something as negative as that to a young girl today, but I think it was quite useful advice in a way — it made me think properly about what I COULD do in the art world. I loved Victorian children’s book illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, as well as Aubrey Beardsley and the Irish stained glass artist Harry Clarke. As a teenager I discovered Roger Dean, who designed amazing album covers for the prog rock band Yes (I’d no idea what the music was like, I just loved the landscape on Tales from Topographic Oceans), and an Irish fantasy artist named Jim Fitzpatrick, who did Thin Lizzy album sleeves: record sleeves, album cover art, was a huge part of our world in the 70s and 80s, and a major design influence. So, I decided I wanted to be an illustrator.

My university, the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, didn’t have a dedicated illustration course, so I signed up for Visual Communication. My parents and school careers officer knew nothing about the art world and — like Granma — they were worried I’d never make a living, so they made me sign up for History of Art and Design too, in case I needed to be a teacher. Which, ironically, did turn out to be helpful, but only 35 years after I graduated!

Magazines were always important: when I was a teenager we lived in the Irish countryside, which felt very isolated, and magazines were a connection to other worlds. But it wasn’t necessarily the kind of magazines you might imagine — Vogue was incredibly boring to a teenager back in the 80s, and we didn’t get The Face in our local newsagents in Kildare. I loved Smash Hits, the pop music magazine, but also The Observer Magazine and things like Car magazine — I couldn’t drive, but they published cool artwork.

In College I discovered Rolling Stone—then art directed by Derek Ungless—and that blew my mind. In my final year at NCAD, the students all had to enter a design competition, and say what you’d do if you won (the prize was support for an internship). I said I’d go to New York, and Rolling Stone; and as you also had to prove you were serious about this internship, I wrote to Rolling Stone (and several other places) asking if I could intern with them—if I came to NYC all the way from Ireland.

They wrote back — everyone wrote back — and said yes.

I didn’t win the competition, but I did manage to fund a two-week visit to New York, which was definitely one of the greatest, most life-changing events I’ve ever had. I visited Esquire, Print Magazine, Steve Heller at The New York Times Book Review, and I spent a whole week in and out of the art department at Rolling Stone. Everyone was wonderful. I came home a fortnight later determined that the magazine world was for me.

After I graduated, I moved to London. I had no contacts, I didn’t have a British school or university background, but I had to try to find work, and one good thing about magazines is they all listed names and phone numbers on the masthead. Derek at Rolling Stone had told me about how his career started at Radio Times, under the legendary art director David Driver, so I thought, ok, let’s try Radio Times.

I called the art department and told them I was a freelance designer available for shift work, and they told me to come in a couple of days later with my portfolio to show the art director, Jenny Fleet. Of course, I had no magazine experience whatsoever at this point, and my portfolio was mostly self-generated illustration, not even college work, but I did have my design degree, and I talked passionately about magazines. Radio Times had an illustrious tradition of commissioning illustration, which, again, I could talk passionately about. And, most importantly, Radio Times was a machine; they had hundreds of pages passing through the art department every week, so they always needed extra help. Jenny started me the following week.

In fact, I ended up freelancing there for two years. It was an invaluable experience in every way: not at all glamorous, but a fantastic practical education in the day-to-day world of publishing.

Early inspirations: (Clockwise) English illustrator Aubrey beardsley; roger dean’s album cover for “Tales from Topographic Oceans”, Irish stained-glass artist harry Clarke (Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught) and irish fantasy artist jim fitzpatrick

The list of roles that you’ve held in publishing is a mile long. What about magazines did (and perhaps do) you find particularly appealing?
I always used to say that print magazines are the most perfect form of communication. Unlike video or film, magazine pages stay still: you can take your time looking at them, and you can tear pages out and stick them up on your wall. Unlike books, magazines are—historically—designed to be disposable: you can toss them in the recycling when you’re done. Magazines usually feature a range of voices and perspectives: their subject matter changes as time goes by, and the best of them reflect developing ideas and changes in their audience’s world. Magazines don’t stand still, but any single edition is always a time capsule, capturing the zeitgeist and giving a more honest picture of society’s preoccupations than any history book. For creators like photographers, seeing your work reproduced BIG on the pages of a magazine like Vogue or T Magazine is far more gratifying than on a two-inch phone screen.

Nowadays many commercial magazines are struggling with print, as we are all too aware, but there is a continuous stream of new independent titles launching. And what I love about these is how much creative freedom they have and how passionate their editorial teams are.

You worked at successful magazines all over the world during the halcyon days. What was that like?
Fun but stressful! “Successful” has different implications in different parts of the world, especially when it comes to finances. I don’t think there’s been a time or place in my three-decade career, even in the 90s and early 2000s, when agreeing budgets and securing talent have been plain sailing. It’s always been a struggle, it’s just that once the struggle might have been, “Mario Testino can’t shoot our 10-page cover story because he’s already booked for British Vogue,” whereas now it might be “How do we shoot a 10-page cover story with a total budget of $1500?”

As an art director, much of the time you’re too busy thinking about how to get the next issue out, or how to resolve a problem in the team, stressing about the demands of your editor, or fighting with the advertising department, to spend much time thinking, ‘Hey, I’m art directing Vogue, isn’t this cool?!’ People often assume that working on glamorous titles means you live a glamorous life, but in my experience art directors are usually the last people stuck in the office on a Friday night, trying to get pages to production and waiting for final copy to turn up!

That said, working on different titles in different countries has always been what motivates and stimulates me, and the greatest thing is always the people: the excitement of new audiences and working with new creative teams—their reaction to what you’re doing, and what they teach you while you’re doing it.

In GQ India, for instance, lots of our photographers worked on Bollywood productions, and the people featured in the magazine were Bollywood stars. British House & Garden taught me about shooting interiors, which is totally different to fashion or portraiture, and introduced me to a whole other type of audience. Art directing Myself magazine in Munich meant discovering German photography — a huge and vibrant creative field, which you just wouldn’t be exposed to if you if you spent all your career in London or New York.

Another thing I enjoy is the sheer adventure of stepping into the unknown. Launching Vogue in Russia in 1998, in the run up to our inaugural issue the ruble collapsed, the government collapsed, and all our bank accounts were frozen. When we launched GQ in Thailand the Editor in Chief, a former political writer, was called in for questioning by the military junta. We launched Vogue Arabia with a Saudi princess in the Editor’s seat. The debut of Glamour Iceland coincided with a volcanic eruption, and when we launched Vogue in Greece the offices were fire-bombed by terrorists.

I’m not sure these count as “halcyon days” but they certainly were entertaining!

Hayes says she enjoys “the sheer adventure of stepping into the unknown.” Before Vogue Russia’s inaugural issue in 1998, “the ruble collapsed, the government collapsed, and all our bank accounts were frozen.” Credits: (Left to right) Photograph: Mario Testino / Photograph: Hedi Slimane.

In 2012, the September issue of American Vogue still clocked in at 916 pages. In 2023, eleven years later, the page count was down to 121. Times have obviously changed in a great many ways, both for magazines and of course for the people that make them. How have you had to adapt over the years and how has the evolution of this business affected your career choices?
Like most people, I think, a lot of my career choices were made for me—or perhaps I should say that offers were made which I felt I couldn’t refuse.

I’d been a magazine art director ten times (twice on Russian Vogue), and worked in the art world, as Art Director of Phillips contemporary art auction house, when, in 2012, I was offered the job of Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International. This meant I would no longer be working on a single title, or running my own art department, but it also meant I spent the next six years consulting on 14 launches around the world — and it was based in Paris. Definitely an offer I couldn’t refuse.

At the end of 2018 my favourite ex-boss had just joined the board of a luxury retail group and asked me to be their consulting art director, running a team of 17 designers in Moscow and St Petersburg, which was an exciting new challenge, so I said yes to that. Of course, Covid hit in 2020, so that ended, but I was already working on a freelance project as art director and co-author of The Fashion Yearbook, plus I was getting asked to do lecturing here and there. So it wasn’t really a conscious choice to step away from being a full-time magazine art director. It’s just that other things came along.

And I’m grateful for that. I know a lot of art directors who have had very successful careers in magazines, spending 20 years or more on major titles, who were made redundant as companies cut back and retrench. It’s extremely difficult for a lot of these people to adjust to the loss of status—and income.

How are the skills that you learned during your years in magazine publishing applicable to other roles and tasks set before you?  
Working with photographers and illustrators is, of course, something I still do for commercial clients, and for my students. I lead the Professional Practice module on the Photography BA course at Oxford Brookes University, so I’m teaching them about stuff like how to run a shoot, how to manage budgets, how to interact with clients including art directors and picture editors. I have a regular lecture called “Unsolicited Advice for Young Photographers” where I share random things I’ve learned over the years — everything from the importance of scouting a location before a shoot, to who’s in charge of ordering lunch, to how you can and cannot leverage connections — with real life horror stories about what happens when things go wrong.

And of course, for my work with “The Fashion Yearbook” my experience of international photography and publishing in newer and emerging markets is vital.

I think for everyone the broader skills you need to run an art department and successfully produce a magazine are invaluable in many other areas. Time and people management; the ability to negotiate, delegate and close a deal, as it were, these are always useful, no matter what you’re doing.

I find that years of experience in simply LOOKING at things — looking at Polaroids on a shoot, looking at layouts your team is working on, reading copy, analysing, and giving feedback, especially under pressure — is incredibly useful when it comes to student assessments (of which I have many nowadays).

One specific magazine skill I bring into my academic career is layout, good design practice and presentation, the art of visual storytelling. In other words, I give a good slide deck! But seriously, an awful lot of academic presentations are dull, dry, or flat-out ugly. I try to make a point of delivering lectures that look great and are fun. There’s no reason why a lecture can’t be cool, exciting and memorable as well as informative.

In the six and a half years that Hayes spent as art director for condé nast international, she helped launch 14 magazine titles, including “Vogue Thailand”, the german women’s magazine “Myself” and “Glamour” iceland among many others. Credits: (starting top left, cLockwise) Vogue CS, photograph: Branislav Simoncik, creative direction: Jan Kralicek / Vogue Arabia, photograph: Inez & Vinoodh, art direction: Loretta De Goede / GQ Middle East, photograph: Peggy Sirota, art direction: Loretta De Goede / Vogue Thailand, photograph: Hans Feurer / Vogue Ukraine, photograph: Chad Pitman / Vogue Hong Kong, photograph: Nick Knight / Glamour Iceland, photograph: Silja Magg / Condé Nast Traveller Middle East, Photograph: Martin Westlake, art direction: Sabina Parkinson.

Tell us about your work days and/or projects now.
As a freelance now running my own business, and after years of travel and long days in far flung offices, I’ve been trying to manage things so I can spend a LITTLE less time working. I try to take an afternoon off to see an exhibition or visit a museum at least every week or two, but I have that freelance thing of never wanting to say no in case you never get another offer!

The list of projects I’m working on at any given time varies nicely. I currently have commercial clients for whom I work on branding and brand identity, commissioning photography and video. Finding talent around the world is a key part of my skill set these days, and recently I’ve been working on video shoots in India and eastern Europe. I design and art direct books with “Legacy Creates”, a boutique South African media group, and we’re currently engaged on a private commission for a musician in Capetown. Plus I’m still on the masthead of Vogue Hong Kong as their Design Director at Large. They celebrate their fifth anniversary in 2024, and I’m very proud of the team there. Having worked on layouts for the launch issue, it feels really special to be still involved.

The other big part of my work these days is in education. I feel very lucky to be spending so much time with students these days, as they give me a totally different, and constantly changing, perspective — it really balances the “historical” side of my career. At Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design in London I lead a Multi-Media Production module, which is part of the “Creative Direction for Fashion Media Masters”/MA course. And at Oxford Brookes University I head up the “Professional Practice for Photography” module for undergrads. Both terms start in January, so the beginning of the year is pretty hectic. With my background in industry rather than academia, what I teach is very much based on the real world, not just theory, and I firmly believe it has to be as contemporary as possible. So, for instance, this term there’s quite a lot of classroom discussion about AI. With the photography students, topics around ethics get more pressing every year.

I also lead a module on “Media Branding and Business Development”, which exercises a different part of my brain, and deliver an annual lecture called “Legacy Media in a Digital World” at Leeds University, which I’ve been doing for coming up on eight years. Every year that slide deck changes because every year the media business changes, it’s really fascinating to track.

One of your many interesting roles is being a teacher to a new generation of visual artists. Do you have students whose goal it is to work at a magazine or to create their own? If so, what do you tell them and what is the nature of the jobs waiting for them out there?  
Lots of my students want to work at or start magazines, and I tell all of them the first thing you have to do is BUY magazines. If you don’t support the industry, how do you expect it to support you?

Then, I say, it’s all about research. Look at magazines — and books, and films, and exhibitions — and train your eye. Find out who’s doing what, learn people’s names and make contacts. Making contacts in our social media dominated world is SO much easier than it was when I was starting out, but you still have to make the effort.

As for the jobs that are out there, again, they need to do the research. My Multi-Media Production module introduces students to a range of subjects, including experiential design, working with photography, typography, film and moving image, VR and AR, etc — fashion and design is a wide field. A lot of my Creative Direction students start off thinking they can graduate and instantly get a job as “a Creative Director.” It doesn’t help when brands and companies are forever calling celebrities “Creative Directors”! I tell them that job titles tend to reflect salary and experience, and you need to start at the bottom, and you need skills: learn how to use Adobe InDesign, learn how photographers work and how you can work with them, learn how to behave in teams, assist a stylist, produce your own blog or newsletter, use your Instagram account for more than just beach selfies and party pics. Practice your craft.

The thing is, everything is changing super-fast. At one point the masthead of Vogue Scandinavia, for instance, included a Nature Expert, as well as a Gender Fluidity Expert, a Diversity and Inclusion Editor, and someone doing paternity cover. So, there’s a job for you out there, you just have to think very hard about what that job might be, and if you don’t find it, maybe you have to make it yourself.

Hayes has been art director and co-author of German publisher Callwey’s “the Fashion yearbook” since 2019.

How have students' prospects and expectations changed over the years? I was wondering about this because when I was in journalism school in the early aughts, it was never a topic that we might start our own magazine. Back then the goal was solely to work for one of the glossy behemoths in a major city.
I am still constantly surprised at how many students want work on magazines—and how many want to start their own magazine; despite the fact they rarely buy them. I did a workshop on exactly this topic last term (I started my own independent photography magazine, DayFour, back in 2002, which I published for ten years). A major project which I set allows students to set their own brief, and choose any platform, and no one ever seems to want to set up a website or devise a social media campaign: they all want to make books or magazines, or zines. I think there’s a romance about print, no matter what. And despite the dwindling number of places you can buy print magazines, the number of titles out there is honestly proliferating all the time.

In your LinkedIn bio it says that you’re always happy to discuss (…) “where this fascinating industry might be going next”. Where do you think it’s going next?
Well, I still believe in magazines as a concept, for all the reasons above, but whether the traditional publishing companies will survive or in what form, I don’t know. You can define a magazine as simply “a collection of ideas” but I also believe in the print aspect. I see so many amazing new titles all the time, and I know how passionately people feel about making magazines, so I think they’ll survive. Indie magazines often print on great paper, at a reduced frequency, at a higher cover price. Their content tends to be very focused. The traditional commercial model of lots of pages, lots of topics, lots of issues… I just don’t see the point of that now, and I think publishers feel the same, but they have trapped themselves in the monthly or weekly cycle. They are leveraging their brand names across different platforms and media, but there’s a limit to brand elasticity.

Follow Fiona on Instagram @theartdictator