Eye is an award-winning, independent magazine about design and visual culture, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture worldwide. Simon Esterson and John L. Walters bought the magazine from its previous owners in 2008, so 2019 marks the eleventh anniversary of Eye’s independence.
John L. Walters
John L. Walters is editor and co-owner (with Simon Esterson) of Eye, the international review of graphic design; he also edits Pulp, ‘a journal of people and paper’, a client/customer magazine for Italian paper manufacturer Fedrigoni. Originally a composer, Walters worked professionally as a musician and record producer before becoming a journalist and launching music journal Unknown Public in the 1990s. For five years he wrote a regular music column for The Guardian; he has also written for The Independent, Varoom, Crafts, The Wire and many other magazines and papers. He is the author of Alan Kitching: A Life in Letterpress (Laurence King, 2016). Walters has helped programme many design events, including Eye’s regular Type Tuesdays at St Bride Library. In November 2018 he won ‘Editor of the Year’ for Eye in the ‘Independent’ category of the BSME (British Society of Magazine Editors) Awards. He has edited Eye since 1999.
Simon Esterson
Simon Esterson is the art director and co-owner (with John L. Walters) of Eye magazine, and the principal of editorial design consultancy Esterson Associates, whose clients include UAL (University of the Arts London), History Today and architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). Esterson began designing and printing, using a small Adana press, while at school. In the 1980s he became an art director for The Architectural Press and he was the joint founder and art director of Blueprint, whose publisher Wordsearch launched Eye in 199o. With Mark Porter, Esterson re-designed Publico (Portugal) and the Sunday Times (London). He has designed books for Tate, the British Museum, the Royal Academy, Alan Kitching, Phaidon Press and more. Other editorial redesign projects by Esterson include the Sunday Times Magazine and The Guardian in London, NZZ am Sonntag and Le Temps in Switzerland and Valor in Brazil. Magazines he has art directed include Domus (Italy), Sight & Sound (UK) and he is joint art director of Art Quarterly. Esterson is also creative director of Pulp journal, produced for Fedrigoni by Eye.