Richard Turley (graphic designer)

Cover of "The Hedge Fund Myth", in Bloomberg Businessweek

In 2011, Turley was appointed as the creative designer of Bloomberg Businessweek.[5] During his tenure, Turley completely redesigned Businessweek, in favor of a more avant-garde style than the publication had previously been known for.[6] Turley and editor Josh Tyrangiel began to develop an experimental visual aesthetic for the magazine, that looked like "it had been assembled from PowerPoint clip art by some sales manager on a cocaine bender."[7] The redesign drew attention for its provocative style and visual appeal.[8][9] Designer George Lois described the redesigned look as "the best consistent set of covers in 40 years."[10]

Many of Turley's covers drew attention for their provocative and controversial designs.[11][12] A story on the UAL/Continental Airlines merger drew controversy for Turley's cover depicting two airplanes having sex.[13][14][15] Turley's cover of a Businessweek article titled "The Hedge Fund Myth" drew controversy for its phallic imagery illustrating the divide between expectations and reality in hedge fund returns.[16][17][18] Alexander Nazaryan of The Atlantic questioned whether the hedge fund cover and others like it ran the risk of overshadowing the reporting they illustrated.[19] Bloomberg published an article explaining the design process of "The Hedge Fund Myth"'s cover.[20]

Turley was named the Hottest Creative Player in the 2011 Adweek Hotlist.[21] He was ranked #46 on The Verge 50 list in 2013.[2] In 2014, The Atlantic published a tribute to Turley's work, showcasing some of his best Businessweek covers.[22]

Turley was commissioned to design the cover of the 2013 edition of American Illustration's annual magazine.[23]

In 2014, Turley left Businessweek to serve as MTV's first senior vice president of visual storytelling and deputy editorial director.[24] In 2015, Turley created "MTV No Chill", a multi-platform project which ran on the channel between 6-8pm.[25] As part of No Chill, MTV content was edited and remixed with short form videos, sketches and graphics. Turley developed an experimental approach to producing content for MTV that incorporated social media and internet culture.[26] The resulting look was described by some as "being eyefucked by bullshit."[27]

Turley became the executive creative director of content and editorial design at Wieden+Kennedy in 2016.[10] Turley launched the WKTV channel in 2017.[28] While at Wieden+Kennedy, Turley led a redesign of Formula One's logo and branding.[29] The redesign included the creation of new typefaces, and a new logo which replaced one adopted in 1994.[30][31] Turley cited Franco Grignani and The Designers Republic as creative influences on the redesign, which was inspired by the aesthetics of the videogame Wipeout.[32] Manufacturing company 3M claimed that the redesigned F1 logo bore similarities to the logo for its Futuro sock brand, and may have infringed on its copyright.[33][34] Formula One agreed to not use the logo on therapeutic or orthopedic products so as to avoid confusion with Futuro, and 3M withdrew their opposition to the trademark.[35]

Turley designed a special edition of 'SUP Magazine in 2015.[36] He designed covers and parody ads for Esquire's special edition of the political satire magazine Spy.[37] The issue, which ran during the 2016 US Presidential Election, lampooned political events and figures such as Donald Trump, as well as Hillary and Bill Clinton.[38]

Turley designed a special magazine section for culture magazine 032c.[39] The section dealt with the impact that the alt-right's distortion of facts had on absurdity and reality in discourse, stating that it had given people a license to become "Nonsense Warriors".[40] He also worked on other publications, such as Mushpit and Good Trouble in 2017.[41]

Turley became the editorial director of Interview magazine when it was relaunched in 2018, taking over from Fabien Baron. He works with creative director Mel Ottenberg.[42]

Turley co-founded Civilization magazine with Mia Kerin and Lucas Mascatello in 2018.[43] Turley had previously worked with Mascatello at MTV, and approached him with the idea of starting their own newspaper.[44] The magazine was inspired by the decline of print media, and.[45] Civilization is a print-only broadsheet which focuses on life and culture in New York.[46] Fashion designer Junya Watanabe collaborated with Turley to use content and imagery from Civilization on Watanabe's Spring 2020 Collection.[47]

The publication has developed a cult following due to its personalized, unorthodox style. Dazed described the magazine as a "anarchic countercultural diary."[48] Civilization launched a personalized mail art campaign during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns as a way to reach out to New York residents.[49] Civilization also produces Civilization Radio.[50]

Turley was included in Jens Müller's The History of Graphic Design. Vol. 2: 1960–Today (2018). He designed the 57th Annual Design and Art Direction collection in 2019.[51] That year, he designed the ad campaign for Rhizome's 7x7 conference at the New Museum. He described the campaign, which made use of analogue advertising methods like brochures, posters and artwork, as "an exploded magazine".[52]

In 2019, Turley designed a window campaign for retailer Barneys New York while it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The campaign was noted for its unorthodox approach of frankly relating the store's financial difficulties.[53] The campaign featured window designs with tongue-in-cheek slogans such as "NOT CLOSED" and "THE EMPEROR HAS CLOTHES".[54] Turley stated that he wanted "to encourage them to be a little bit more vulnerable and out front."[55]

Turley designed the branding of Good Buys, a non-profit fashion fundraiser, in 2020.[56][57]

The sixth issue of Civilization—released in May 2022—garnered attention because most of its contents were generated through artificial intelligence (AI), featuring computer-generated texts that have been described as spaning "hate lists, girl texts, break-up DMs, Butt2butt, emotional affairs and Fentanyl Strips."[58] Writing for Dazed, Günseli Yalcinkaya felt that the edition "perfectly conveys the feeling of being terminally online", and regarded it as a "glorious brain dump of images and information; an aggressively text-based assault on the senses in the shape of a Dadaist broadsheet."[58] Turley said the issue was an attempt to "make something horrible, based, repellent", and cited Lou Reed's 1975 album Metal Machine Music as an inspiration.[58] Interviewed by Yalcinkaya, he explained the thinking behind the issue's chaotically structured contents:

Playing with the idea of words as images and trying to blend it together so you can start or finish at any point without taking any specific message from any of it. Forgetting all ideas that words have to mean something. Like playing a record at the wrong speed. Like that feeling of watching a video backwards. Just sensation. [...] It‘s an issue about feeling something, then nothing. It‘s about feeling something, then feeling it again, then nothing. Feeling something like a lot of people all at once. A crowd. A crowd with no clear identity, no clear message. It‘s about being unsure if the message that‘s being sent is the same one you‘re receiving.[58]

In 2022, the designer launched his own creative agency, Food, together with friends Nick Farnhill and Iain Tait; with offices in London and New York City.[59] Turley described Food as a response against a years-old trend in the creative industry that he identified as "duplicative" and "formulaic", driven by a management focus on brand strategy over the creative process, resulting in works that are largely reworkings of other designs.[60] Food's first job was the zine Softie for British fashion brand Mulberry, released on the occasion of the opening of its Wooster Street flagship store in New York City.[61]