Radio Times covers from the late 70s/early 80s
Notebook: 8 January 2018 | MAGAZINES | ILLUSTRATION I’ve unearthed a bunch of old Radio Times covers that I saved from the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was a graphic design student at the time at Lanchester Polytechnic (Coventry) and then the Royal College of Art, and I would hang on to any odd bits of print graphics that I liked and tape them into a scrapbook. These simple but striking Radio Times covers (shown below) have stood the test of time well and are dated only by their white borders¹ and single cover line and picture². The Radio Times was art directed at the time by David Driver (1969-1981) who transformed the magazine from being a rather worthy, old fashioned ‘journal’ into a captivating and beautifully designed publication. Driver had a real grasp for visual journalism and he commissioned some of the best illustrators, photographers and information designers of the day. The Radio Times had always had a history of making use of top quality black and white line illustration³ dotted within its …