Lloyd Ziff

September 27, 1942 - August 1, 2024

Lloyd Ziff Remembered

The Society of Publication Designers lost a great friend, mentor, and inspiration this summer, when legendary magazine designer Lloyd Ziff passed on August 1 at the age of 81. In Lloyd’s stellar career, he was responsible for the visual direction of some of the most significant magazines of his time, mentored and jump-started the careers of countless designers and photographers, had a brilliant second career as a noted photographer, and provided the SPD community with many years of leadership and friendship.

Lloyd began his career on the West Coast, working at Rolling Stone in San Francisco and New West in Los Angeles, among others. But it was when he moved to New York City that he began a spectacular run of magazine art direction. In the space of 10 years, Lloyd was the art director of House & Garden, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast Traveler, and Travel & Leisure. His 1993 redesign of Travel & Leisure was breathtaking, and won him a stack of gold and silver medals in that year’s SPD Pub27 judging for both design and photography. His earlier work at Condé Nast was just as memorable, featuring bold, beautiful, often provocative photography, elegant typography, and smart, cool covers.

Lloyd fought editors good and bad, big and small, and managed his way through the magazine Borgs of Condé Nast and Time Inc., keeping his dignity and spirit and doing brilliant work, all the while mentoring younger creatives and keeping a sense of joy while he worked. He was an inspiration to us all. Lloyd’s work gives the sense that you can blend art and commerce, and that magazines can be something more than just receptacles for advertising; they can be uplifting and inspiring and bring a sense of art and elegance to the mainstream marketplace. That is what Lloyd did so brilliantly for so many years. He elevated everything he touched, both magazines and the people he worked with.

After a stint as creative director of Time Custom Publishing, Lloyd moved on to a second career as a photographer. He was in his mid-50s and recovering from a heart attack, but he pursued photography with the same passion as he had magazine design. Eventually there were gallery shows, museum collections, and his brilliant photographs hang on the walls of numerous friends, colleagues, and fans.

Lloyd’s friend and former colleague, Richard Pandiscio, said, “I remember very well how fond he was of SPD.” Lloyd was an important part of SPD in the late 80s and the 90s, during a transitional time when the magazine design giants of the 70s and 80s were leaving the field and soon-to-be giants were just beginning to make names for themselves. As a board member, frequent judge, and all-around wise man and cheerleader, Lloyd offered constant counsel and inspiration, and he liked to party with SPD, too!

I met Lloyd when I was a peanut art director, and was initially awed by his reputation. I never got close to him, but I always appreciated his approachability, his friendliness, his big heart, and his ongoing passion for magazine design and visual communication. As Fred Woodward puts it, “I didn’t know Lloyd as well as I might’ve, but I loved him just the same.”

He was a shining star, and we all will miss him very much. 

We send condolences to Lloyd’s husband, Stephen Kelemen, and family and friends.

SPD reached out to some of Lloyd’s friends, colleagues, and those who admired him for some comments on his life and work.

—Robert Newman

Art Directors, Friends, and Colleagues Remember Lloyd Ziff

When I was starting out in magazines, Lloyd Ziff was already something of a legend. He had that mix of smarts, style, flamboyance, and daring that defined the finest designers on the West Coast. Lloyd quickly became the creative lead at some of the best magazines New York had to offer. Lloyd was brave. His inspired choices for collaborators put him on the high wire, for he encouraged them to express themselves fully. This work stimulated all of us, and gave us license to experiment more and search for unexpected solutions. Lloyd was also friends with many of my heroes, so I was surprised how cordial and easy-going he was at SPD Galas and other gatherings. I’d occasionally receive an email complimenting me on some work, which knocked me out. He was forever on the high wire, never looking down.  —DON MORRIS

Lloyd Ziff was a friend and mentor to me as a young art director, and I learned so much from him. He was a font of knowledge in all things design and especially photography. I remember speaking with him while designing Joe (the Starbucks magazine) about so many photographers and illustrators; he had a zeal about who he thought was great and we were often able to hire them. He showed me photos he took of icons like Patti Smith and others while in his teens and 20s—they are just astounding. We also shared a love of cars and would chat about his lovely little Porsche 914 and others. I think the best part of Lloyd is that he was a true gentleman and friend. He always made time for questions and really helped so many people. I was lucky to be able to work with him, and keep trying to pass on all he taught me. —MICHAEL MRAK

Lloyd in 1975 in San Francisco at City Magazine: “The solution for a design challenge is usually right in front of you."
—DIANA LA GUARDIA

Lloyd had a light touch.

A spread—one remarkable image, carefully placed in white space,
with the fewest possible words set in the perfect font.

A photograph (so many of my favorite Lloyd Ziff photographs)—a subject, the thing of most interest, almost hidden in the middle-to-deep distance in frame…

He practically challenges you to find it. To see the world he saw.

But, no one saw it quite like Lloyd.

And now that’s where he is—the thing of most interest—out past the horizon line,
just out of sight, but still in frame. —FRED WOODWARD

As a very young man, I was lucky enough to be Lloyd’s assistant at House & Garden starting in 1982 —my very first job out of school. He was a powerful player in a powerful company (Condé Nast Publications) which allowed me to be privy to the inner workings of the prestigious publishing house. I may not have fully realized it at the time, but it was an opportunity that would serve me well. Lloyd was fun, fair and supportive and even his harshest criticisms when reviewing a design layout would be something like, “Well, I’d just flip right past that page but it would make a nice lining for my birdcage” which would make you laugh, and definitely motivate you to go back to the drawing board. When Lloyd was asked to be the creative director of a new travel magazine, he asked me to join him as his art director. For two years before its launch, we developed the look of Condé Nast Traveler. Every night of those two years Lloyd would take a photographer, an artist, a writer, or an editor to dinner; a guest list that included Helmut Newton, Hiro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz, Diane Keaton, David Hockney, Duane Michaels, Pierre LeTan, and on and on. He knew the importance of building close relationships with contributors and he’d quote Milton Glaser who he had worked for at New West magazine who had told him something along the lines of “take people to dinner every day and they’ll work for you all night.” He always wanted the work to surprise the reader and a big part of his success as an art director was in the time he spent matching (or sometimes deliberately mis-matching) the talent to each assignment. He’d give his photographers and editors and designers the simple brief and then step back. He was never heavy-handed and rarely was he disappointed with the result. —RICHARD PANDISCIO

I’ve been privileged as top editor of Time Inc’s Money magazine, John Kennedy Jr’s George, Reader’s Digest International and Clay Felker’s New West to work with the best of the best design directors around the world—led by Milton Glaser and my friends of 50 years, Walter Bernard and Lloyd Ziff. And none surpassed Lloyd’s eye and energy. 

I think of one example from the early days of New West. As a first time top editor in 1976, I was learning my job. Lloyd knew his.

One Saturday, Los Angeles’s toxic smog produced a thing of beauty—a huge pink and orange and yellow cloud. There was no wind to speak of that day, so the cloud hung over the city for hour after hour. Lloyd did something terrific. He phoned every noted photographer in town and told them to go outside and photograph the cloud and send the best snaps to him. Monday, to my amazement, Lloyd showed me the most arresting of those images, already roughly laid out. We ran the photos over 10 fabulous pages, then created a bestselling cloud poster and wall calendar. The magazine spread and the products generated a burst of positive reaction from our readers, who like me, saw the cloud beautify LA that day and never thought they’d ever see it in its smoggy glory again. Yet they did because of Lloyd Ziff’s eye and energy. —FRANK LALLI

Even though I hadn’t seen Lloyd in far too many years, I’ve been reminded of him often. In an honored place in our home is an inscribed gift, one of his tender portraits of his Pratt classmates Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. To me, it’s indicative of the gifts that led to him being both the photographer and the designer he was: his ability to put himself in places you might not expect him to be, and then be bold enough to do something you might not expect him to do. Lloyd was both all over the place, and locked in. He was never wedded to one design style, or one philosophy, or one medium. He was adaptable, irascible, audacious, and sometimes inscrutable. You could never be sure what you’d see from him next.
—MICHAEL GROSSMAN

I never knew Lloyd personally, but his influence loomed, larger-than-life, over my magazine design career. His work was an extension of the great art directors who bridged the 1940s-1960s, when Alexey Brodovitch and others drew on European influences to make the bold use of photography a foundation of publication design. I first became aware of his bold repositioning of House & Garden, Vanity Fair, and then Travel & Leisure, and the great Starbucks publication Joe magazine, which stood apart from the newsstand sales-focused consumer magazine covers/interior page designs of that era. He brought a spare, exacting eye to the magazines he art directed, and his magazine design always showcased photography with a keenly curated presentation. He was always in the game to support (and find paying assignments for) great artists that he considered peers and friends. He was in the truest sense, a visual editor. I met with him once, and ended up buying a print of his now-famous image of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as a birthday gift for my brother. He was then (and always, from what I have read), kind, generous, and supportive. He leaves behind a formidable portfolio of publication design and his fine art photography. —FRANCESCA MESSINA

I'm fortunate to own a gloriously evocative photograph of Parc Güell in Barcelona that Lloyd probably shot in the 90s. I was drawn to it when I purchased it from him many years ago, and it has given me unending pleasure ever since. Reflecting now on Lloyd's terribly sad passing, I recall one most delightful part of his personality: his ability to, somehow, always be in a good mood! Lloyd loved his life, and gazing at that beautiful image has always been a reminder to me to do the same.
—ROBERT PRIEST

The New York Times has a wonderful obituary and bio of Lloyd Ziff here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/arts/lloyd-ziff-dead.html.  

Many thanks to Richard Pandiscio for his kind help in compiling this tribute to Lloyd. The color photograph of Lloyd was taken at the SPD MAG2000 conference in Monterrey, CA, April 1996, by Steven Freeman. The black and white photograph of Lloyd is by Gene Pierce from the SPD Pub33 judging.