SVA Archives

James McMullan Collection Box 1 Folder 5: cover for West magazine, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1969.

June 15, 2014

Go West

West magazine was launched in 1967 as a weekly supplement to the Los Angeles Times, but it really began to develop its singular graphic identity in 1968 when editor Jim Bellows persuaded Mike Salisbury to become art director. (For an excellent overview of the magazine’s short but influential life (1967-1972), see Steve Heller’s piece from Design Observer.) Lots of great designers and illustrators did work for the magazine, including Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, Jon Van Hamersveld, and James McMullan. McMullan was responsible for the striking graphic for a cover story on fifty years of radio (above), but more reflective of his work are the arresting and delicate (as well as unexpectedly compositionally similar) illustrations for articles on Hawaii and Angela Davis.

Color illustration of a Hawaiian woman wearing a flower necklace that morphs into the state of Hawaii against a light grid pattern

James McMullan Collection Box 1 Folder 5: Hawaii cover for West magazine, Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1970.

Watercolor illustration of Angela Davis against a tiled wall; underneath her is a closeup of the handle of a rifle, with a tag containing three people on it, a man holding a gun and two women

James McMullan Collection Box 1 Folder 5: Angela Davis illustration for West magazine, Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1971.

This post also appears on our Picturebox blog.