A+ Magazine-Apple-Ziff Davis

A+ Magazine December 1984

Peter Tucker moved from Miller Freeman in San Francisco to Ziff Davis Publishing in Palo Alto to set up A+ Magazine and he was very loyal to his team of various suppliers. I always looked forward to a call from him because he always gave me total freedom and a full blank page. He found it amusing that I had no clue about computer culture and my hybrid style was flexible enough to add extra interest to what seemed to be some fairly dry subject matter. Also there was a concern not to make the images ‘dark’ in tone. This seemed to be a move away from the edgy 1984 Ridley Scott ad that was playing on TV and in cinemas.

The image above accompanied an article to do with interactivity, maybe for games. I think I probably misread the article since the robot is supposed to be a companion rather than a potential adversary. There were no complaints though. I wish I had the articles for most of my work so that I could judge them from the safe distance of time. We’re talking thirty years ago. When I was at Art College in Canterbury the Second World War was thirty years ago! I believe someone is building an online archive of various computer magazines from that time and they would make interesting reading now.

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A+ Magazine 1985

This article was concerned with the archaeology of Apple and computers in general. That history becomes more mysterious the further back in time you go. From our exotic devices now then back to 1960’s Mainframes, to Colossus at Bletchley in the 1940’s, to Babbage in the 19th Century and Loom cards during the Industrial Revolution, the Abacus, Star charts, and so on.

The idea here started as simply a computer emerging from the sand (time). Then it became a stone computer and it was only a short jump to the Sphinx (mystery). As would often happen during my creative process something else would present itself in association, in this case ‘Planet of the Apes’ on TV. So a multi-layered meaning emerges and also something absurd and amusing. Poor old Indiana had to shovel all that sand. I know the feeling.

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A+ Magazine 1985

An article called Juggling D-Base 3. Whatever D-Base 3 does the interpretation here is of moving shapes within shapes.

Also I seem to have strayed into Ayn Rand territory here. She was an author and philosopher who wrote ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and developed a system of Objectivism in philosophy. This reference to her was not intentional and I have only become aware of her influence by watching Adam Curtis documentaries, specifically ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace’. They are worth a look. She was very popular with the Palo Alto set in the 80’s.

The image here is of course Magritte-ish and the placement of the intersection/cruciform skyscraper stone cladding is intentional but more open to interpretation. The cultural climate in the USA in the 80’s represented a huge shift in the collective imagination and it definitely seemed like a crossroads scenario, for better or worse.

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A+ Magazine July 1984

Here’s something by way of light relief although I did pine over the initial idea. The solution was to set the travellers in a Vintage era. The page below shows typical ads running in A+ at the time so the solution was in fact literally staring me in the face.

A+ Ads page

An example of typical advertising in A+ and other magazines at the time.

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A+ Magazine January 1986

This article is about calculating your car loan, an early App if you like. Bear in mind that we’re not online yet. This was produced in Black and White due to reduced budgets and because of the volatility of the computer market at the time the various support industries started to enter a lean period. The focus would shift constantly between hardware and software and of course the online virtual space was not yet a reality. Even at this time it still seemed a rather bonkers Marshall McLuhan/Star Trek figment of the imagination.

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