An interview with Nick Logan, founder of THE FACE

Hello, Nick. You launched this magazine 45 years ago, using your own savings, and now photographs from it have been gathered for an exhibition, Culture Shift, at London’s National Portrait Gallery. What would 32-year-old Nick have made of that?

Well, I wouldn’t have believed that possible. I certainly thought it was going to be collectable – to the extent of burrowing away three or four bundles of the first issue, sticking them in the garage and thinking ​“that can be the pension”. But not the National Portrait Gallery, no. That’s incredible.

When did you realise that you wanted to be an editor, as opposed to a writer?

Well, that goes back a long way. On the local paper I worked on [West Essex Gazette] I did my own half-page music column. I liked doing the layout and, weirdly, I quite liked doing office research: ploughing through the council minutes and finding stories in the dry, bureaucratic type. Then [after] I joined the NME [in 1967, becoming editor in 1973], I was more than happy, as an editor, to not write anything again and just get the likes of Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray to do it. The pleasure was in publishing it, more so than writing it. Proofreading, going to the printer, liaising with the photographer in the art department – seeing it all the way through.

How long was the idea for THE FACE rolling around in your head?

The idea of a more grown-up thing, a move on from the NME, was just floating around. It was going to be picture-based, initially, because I’d seen some great photography. I was thinking about reportage and looking at Paris Match and Life magazine. In the very first issue, the picture of The Specials on the beach was close to that. I think the hardest thing was to get the character of the magazine right. That took a long, long time.

At what point do you think you found it?

When Neville [Brody] came to do the design [in 1981], it was a huge leap forward. We were finding it a little bit before that, but that really pushed it on. It just took so long. I’m a bit of a magpie and I changed my mind. I woke up in the night. I didn’t sleep. I’m thinking about this. I’m changing sections around. I’m retiring sections. I’ve got pictures I don’t know what to do with, so I invented a whole section to put them under. I worked every single issue with the same method: the understanding that people turn one page at a time from the front. I’m sure nobody does now, but that was my overriding philosophy.

Is there one thing you’re particularly proud of?

There was a [Jean-Baptiste] Mondino cover [in October 1987]. It’s a beautiful image [of a model] and that’s a touchstone issue. When I started THE FACE, no one was saying: ​“Do a general interest magazine for male and female readers.” It was a rock magazine that always intended to stretch its wings into other areas. As things broadened out, I gradually reduced the amount of music in there. And that issue is the high point. I remember thinking: ​“This is probably as far as I can go.” It’s not even a celebrity on the cover. It’s just a fantastic image, a real achievement.

How did the fashion world embrace what you were trying to do?

Getting the acknowledgement from the different fashion designers, how important THE FACE was to them, continually amazed me. I went to Milan once and a couple of times to Paris and Florence, but I didn’t go to shows. [Staff members] would come back and tell me the stories of the front row and how they were treated and regarded. For a suburban kid, to have that happen was quite remarkable.

What’s the biggest way in which you think the world has changed, from you starting the magazine and us doing it now?

My thoughts about THE FACE when it relaunched were kind of like: what’s the purpose? But the way things are going in America and reverberating around the world, the way things are going in Europe, the way things are going generally, is the reverse of everything that I work towards or champion. So THE FACE does have a reason to be there now again: to combat that.

Any advice for me, in this job, Nick?

Keep your team on board all the time. Always try to show things moving forward. Involve everybody at all stages, let them know what’s at stake and what’s been achieved. Don’t keep them in the dark. And just enjoy it! It looks like you are.

Taken from the spring 25 issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.