Confessions of a Gay Art Director
I’ve been part of the LGBTQ+ media world for a long while, shaping its look, feel, and voice. Over the years, I’ve art directed and creative directed some of its most influential publications: The Advocate, OUT, Genre, Hero, and IN magazine.
Sometimes that work meant stepping into an established publication, taking over the reins and honoring its legacy—like with The Advocate. Other times, it meant building from the ground up, designing every detail from scratch for a new “start-up” magazine.
Each title comes with its own history, its stories, its gossip—and its mythology. What follows is my side of the story.
As one can imagine there are stories to be told and the time has come to tell them. But first, just what is a magazine art director? A magazine AD was the person who put the art and words together to create a style for the magazine that became its brand. It was the "look" of the publication and to do that AD's would hire photographers and illustrators to complete the writing of the story.
A funny thing about time is how it often distorts the truth. Memories are made solely in the mind, of one person, and other people can see things differently. And often do. But these are my recollections—this is how I remember it.e office. It was just Andy and I. So, for about a year it was Andy and I creating the magazine. We had editors, none in the office but that occasionally stopped by, but each issue was planned and executed by the two of us.
While these magazine are gone, their stories live on...
In and Out
After a disastrous year at The Advocate, it was time to get local—WeHo local, in the form of what is commonly called a rag: IN magazine. It was published by Frontiers magazine, Southern California’s oldest and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) publication. Founded in 1981, Frontiers was freely distributed at gay bars, clubs, and businesses throughout Southern California. The biweekly publication covered local, national, and international LGBT news, entertainment, HIV/AIDS topics, and other important issues. It also included its popular escort listings section, Frontiers4Men. As of February 2014, it had a staff of 19 and claimed a readership of 270,000. Those were the good old days.
IN magazine, however, was another story entirely.
Our offices were down the street from Frontiers. We had little to do with them other than the occasional visit to the publisher, Bob Craig. While he was the publisher, the actual founders and owners of IN were David Stern and Mark Hundahl.
IN was what you might call a “start-up.” It didn’t exist as a magazine—only as an idea. Its creation fell to me. I didn’t trust myself to handle both editor and creative director roles, so I set out to find an editor.
JV McAuley was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. His wit was quick and rampant—he was like a Robin Williams character: energetic, fun, and engaging. He had created a drag persona, Shelvelva Kennedy. He was funny… until he wasn’t.
There’s a mythology that grows around people and publications—and IN has its myths. For the record, this is a recollection based on facts, as I see them.
JV was a good editor. And an alcoholic. I had to take him across the street to the gay bar, Gold Coast, and get him plastered just to get his creative juices flowing. They did flow—sometimes like a river, sometimes like a fire hose.
At one point, the Frontiers editors took notice of our little rag. I came up with a cover story called “State of the Union,” about gay relationships. My friend John Skalicky did the portraits; I had worked with him on previous publications.
I worked very hard on this magazine, nights and weekends, often alone. So it was a complete shock when, one afternoon, I was called into Bob Craig’s office and told they could no longer employ me. I was asked to pack my things and leave. I returned to the office and there sat JV, whose only words were, “I didn’t know.”
The peculiar thing about being fired is that it messes with memory. The moment is filled with confusion and hurt—not logic or comprehension.
IN magazine was meant from the start to be different than Frontiers. While Frontiers leaned political, IN Los Angeles adopted a lifestyle-oriented approach, akin to People magazine, focusing on celebrity profiles, entertainment, and cultural features.
After my departure, the magazine hired an art director down the hall who did White Party flyers. The magazine quickly reinvented itself as a publication serving the gay party crowd.
Years later, David Stern and I exchanged emails and letters. In one conversation and in a letter he wrote after I expressed my hurt about my firing:
Thank you for getting real with me, I do remember seeing you in public a while back and having a great conversation with you and how great you looked. As for what you believe, I can't change that, but it is not my truth. For one, I did not start a IN out of retaliation, I offered to buy into Edge with the owner of Golds Gym backing me as he knew I really ran the place. They turned me down and fired me. Bob & Mark were going to start a mag. and they wanted me to run it. I pony upped my own cash and became their partner. IN was started for those reasons, yes at the start of it I thought it would make me happy to see EDGE fold, but when it actually happened that was not the experience. EDGE folded when we were at press with our 2 year anniversary issue, it brought me no joy, like I thought it would. I actually thought it was a really sad day, because none of it had to go down that way. You were long gone by then, so that's a pretty big assumption on your part as to how I felt about that when it happened. Nor do you know that both the prior owners, Merrill & Dennis, reached out to me and made an ammends for the way they treated me long before it folded, and all those ill feelings were healed long before its demise. It was a sad day indeed, and a huge lesson and period of growth for me. As for you, my only thoughts on you are that you were/are mega talented and you were really creative and fun to work with, even if we didn't agree on things like the Mothers Day cover, you still brought a lot to the table. You may believe what you want, but Bob had control over IN for the first couple of years. I had to hire a lawyer just to get access to the books, and when he died we had to sue his estate because he embezzled around 1/4 million from the company (much longer story than that.) That was in 1998, I had no idea you felt that way, what a long time to habor such resentment. I am truly sorry that you have carried that for so long. Guess one can't be loved by everyone, but I know in the big picture, I've done a lot of good and have tried hard to make a difference in the community. Again, I am very sorry that was your experience and perhaps it brings you joy to know that I am out of Frontiers. If that is the case, then so be it, enjoy it, but I think it'd be great to go grab a coffee and talk, but sounds like you might want to throw darts at a picture of me instead. -lol Seriously, would be great to sit with you and talk it thru and catch up, I wish I would have known this sooner.
Revisiting the letter i realize I have indeed harbored resentment. Ironic that Stern says his previous employers reached out and made amends—I cannot say I had that treatment.
JV, never contacted me. The story goes that he was using Crystal Myth and would disappear for days. He too finally lost his job and moved to Iowa to work for a Whole Foods store.
The Boy Who Drew the Studio One logo.
I must have been in my early twenties—still a boy, really—wearing glasses and tired of hearing, “You look so great without them.” What I wanted, more than anything, were contact lenses.
That’s how I met Scott Forbes, an optometrist in West Hollywood who fitted me with my first pair. Somewhere between the exam chair and small talk, he mentioned he was planning to open a dance club. He had a name for it: Studio One.
I told him I was thinking about becoming a graphic designer. This was before computers, before screens—when design meant pencils, paper, and nerve. I asked if I could come back with some ideas.
Weeks later, I did.
I handed him sketches—rough, hand-drawn concepts—but he saw something in them. He told me he liked the direction and that he’d send the work to a boutique design agency on Melrose Place to be properly rendered for print and signage.
The agency was run by Paul Hauge.
I remember physically carrying the sketches there myself. Somehow—whether by timing or luck—I was hired.
My first assignment was to measure the entrance of the building. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t. It required math, architectural understanding—things I didn’t have. Maybe I came across as more capable than I was. Maybe I wanted to believe I was.
I couldn’t do it.
I was terrified of being exposed—of failing in a way that felt total. At one point, overwhelmed and panicked, I cut myself with an X-Acto knife. Not for attention—just fear, pure and quiet.
I didn’t last long there.
I was let go.
But the logo survived.
It went on to live a life of its own—appearing on signage, on matchbooks, on the walls of one of the most legendary gay clubs in Los Angeles. Years later, it resurfaced in the documentary about Studio One, a visual shorthand for an era.
You may have seen me in that documentary—about five seconds of me.
Around that same time, I had another idea: a T-shirt. A posterized version of the Hollywood Sign, set in a circle. Excited, I took it to a shop on Melrose Avenue that produced and sold T-shirts. They agreed to make them for me.
As I was leaving, I flipped through their book of designs.
There it was.
My T-shirt. For sale.
Graphic design, I would learn, doesn’t always belong to the person who creates it.
More than anything, though, it was something I understood. Something I could do. I have envelopes I designed still hanging on people’s walls. I was heavily influenced by Art Deco—the geometry, the lettering—and I developed a kind of formal, almost ornamental handwriting that I still have today.
I would later teach typography in college.
It’s funny. Graphic design was never glamorous. It didn’t particularly pay well—though that may have been me. And unless you were willing to promote yourself endlessly, no one really knew who you were, or cared.
But it chose me.
The Advocate: Art Director 1990's
The Advocate began in Los Angeles in September 1967, after police raided the Black Cat Tavern in Silver Lake and protests followed. It started as a newsletter for PRIDE, a local gay rights group. Early issues covered police harassment and community organizing, as well as gay social life and culture. The first issues were printed at night in the basement of ABC’s television studios in Los Feliz.
For young people at the time, The Advocate was a reliable source of information about gay life, which was changing rapidly.
The publication dropped “Los Angeles” from its name and evolved from a newsletter into a newspaper, then a magazine. It grew beyond local coverage to become a national source of LGBTQ news.
I was hired as art director in 1991 by Richard Rouilard, then editor in chief. Rouilard was a gay rights activist and journalist. He had co-founded the National Gay Rights Advocates, a San Francisco public interest law firm, and worked as society and style editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
At The Advocate, Rouilard pushed for sharper news coverage and a higher national profile. He brought in candid celebrity interviews and covered contentious issues, including anti-gay discrimination, the military ban, and outing. During his two years as editor, circulation grew substantially, with press estimates ranging from about 60,000 to between 120,000 and 150,000.
His approach was bold and controversial, particularly in the magazine’s 1991 story about Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams. Rouilard left The Advocate in 1992 after disputes with the publisher. He died of AIDS in West Hollywood in 1996.
He was also, without a doubt, a bully.
Mark Thompson was one of the editors on staff. He had joined The Advocate in 1975 and spent about two decades there as a writer and senior editor, covering LGBTQ culture, politics, and the AIDS crisis.
Richard belittled Mark in meetings and eventually got rid of him. Perhaps Mark’s gentle nature seemed old school to Richard. He rarely confronted him, and it was uncomfortable to witness. Richard was imposing, with a quick tongue and a quicker mind. He liked to pit people against each other to see what would happen.
About six to seven months in, Rouilard suggests we create a picture book orof gay erotic photography.
The book was to be called LUST: The Body Politic and it certainly lived up to its name. This is from the journals from that time:
Lust: The Lost Advocate Book
It was 1991. Richard Rouillard was editor-in-chief of The Advocate; I was the art director. During my tenure, we produced the Madonna cover, which would become the best-selling issue in the magazine’s history. We watched the Gulf War together, traveled to New York City a few times, and held an editorial meeting in Palm Springs, where a three-way nearly happened with writer Chris Bull and a young man we picked up at a gay bar.
We have to start with Richard Rouillard because that is where this story ends, too: he fired me.
To his credit, Richard was fabulous: a star, a great editor, a persona, a force to be reckoned with. He could also be cold, calculating, and cruel. He inherited Mark Thompson as the arts editor, and Richard’s public dressing-downs of Thompson were painful to witness. He loved pitting people against one another, and it often felt as if he did it just to see what would happen.
Initially, I think we enjoyed working together. We got drunk on a flight to New York City. We often had lunch, sometimes with interesting guests. One afternoon, we met Michael Goff, founder and publisher of a then-fledgling publication called OUT. At that lunch, Goff proposed that The Advocate buy into OUT, an idea Rouillard quickly dismissed. At the time, OUT was seen as a fashion publication, while Richard’s mission at The Advocate was to make it a journalistic enterprise. When he arrived at the magazine, he had tossed out all the personal ads. Goff left, and within a few years OUT had become a major gay publication, with strong circulation and advertising.
Richard and I worked on fashion stories, the magazine’s increasingly political covers, and the effort to upgrade it from a rag to a slick, glossy publication. Somewhere along the way, we decided—or it was decided—that we should develop a publishing division separate from The Advocate but within the same company. The first idea was a soft-core erotic picture book featuring new and emerging photographers, along with a section devoted to more established photographers in the field.
Richard recruited the noted writer Dennis Cooper to write the introduction. The book was planned as a large-format volume: 130 pages of black-and-white photography divided into two portfolios. Portfolio One would feature more renowned photographers such as Steve Arnold, Christopher Makos, Tom Bianchi, and Marcus Leatherdale. The second portfolio would feature emerging photographers such as Rick Castro, Mark I. Chester, Ed Freeman, and Don Saban.
The title, Lust, came out of many discussions about what to call a book of homoerotic images: hard-ons, fine-art photography, and gritty black-and-white pictures. After Richard received Dennis Cooper’s introduction, he added The Body Politic. Cooper’s introduction included this passage: “Lust presents the male nude circa the early 90s—images quirkily lit and decorated, haunted by free-floating thoughts of death, prone to idiosyncratic behavior, and sexy for reasons that gay men even a generation ago may not fully understand. Lust asserts gay men’s need to dream of other men now when the body’s dangers force us to greater distance and wilder places in our appreciation.”
We had a cover image, and that is where things became very political.
I contacted the photographers. Some were friends; others were strangers whose work I had seen publicly and whose contact information I could find. They submitted images, and portfolios began to take shape. At first, I had been told to ask verbally whether they had model releases.
We had settled on a cover: a Keith Kotick photograph of a young man reclining in velour pants, smoking against a leopard-skin couch. His hands were folded at his crotch. To me, the image suggested lust. Kotick was a Brooklyn photographer whose work was gritty, dark, stark, fierce, and black and white. Off we went to press.
Then a letter from a lawyer arrived. I’m not sure how they found us, but the young man on the cover, who worked at a fancy Ian Schrager hotel in New York City, did not want to appear on the cover of a gay book.
Stop the press! Hundreds of copies had been printed. Lawyers and publishers suddenly realized that model releases had to be on file. Rouillard was mad. Go to New York, find Kotick, get a model release.
It was a hot summer in New York City. I was in a hospital with a dying photographer, Keith Kotick.
I had lived in New York during the ’80s and had visited a few hospitals to see friends dying of AIDS. I hated hospitals: the smell, and the open secret that we are mortal, susceptible to viruses, microbes, and bacteria.
Weak and dying, Kotick told me he did not have a model release for the young man on the now-printed cover of Lust. He had verbally told me that he did.
When I returned to Los Angeles, the finger-pointing had begun. Replacing the cover would cost a considerable amount.
Rouillard grew increasingly distant. Finally, he called me into the conference room and said, “Your services are no longer required.”
The book was printed. It cost $15, and editions were produced in German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Richard Rouillard liked to have the last word. At one of our last meetings, he said, “Let’s not put any credits in this.” I had spent six months curating a book of 28 photographers and 130 pages, and in a brief moment it was all dismissed.
A year or two later, there was a rumor that Rouillard had been fired from The Advocate and, during a tirade, had taken a hammer and been physically restrained. It could be true; it would be fitting. It was odd to see the accolades for Richard, knowing he was, at best, a bully. I never underestimated his power as an editor. He knew how to excite, agitate, and compel people to do good work. He could also attack, humiliate, and intimidate people with ease.
The story goes that he resigned. I don’t believe he would have voluntarily given up the role of editor-in-chief. He loved it. A few years later, he called and asked me to lunch. He was working on the style section of a newspaper and thought we might work together. It may have been the closest thing to an apology. He died of AIDS a year later.
From time to time, his name would come up. Karen Ocamb would write moving tributes to him, and I would remind her that he was no saint, far from it. I saw Mark Thompson on and off through the years. I would ask whether he had written about his experience at The Advocate with Richard. He would seem to nod and suggest that the truth would one day come out. I don’t think it ever did.
Richard is not here to defend himself. The people involved likely have other versions of this story. For me, it was a catastrophic event. I loved working at The Advocate. It was an incredible year of my life: the people I met, the stories we created, and the people I worked with.
