Before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Gchat, and even AOL instant messenger, i-D was churning out culture in the form of a zine. The first copy of i-D, literally stapled together by a London-based punk-badge maker in 1980, featured photos of mohawked punks against concrete walls. The shots are now considered some of the first modern street style photos ("Straight ups," founder Terry Jones called them).
The launch party for i-D's n![]()
ew website last week in New York was in no way stapled together, nor was there much that could be called punk, at least in the traditional sense. At the event, called "Future Fashion," a runway show incarnated what the magazine hopes will be its digital future with new owner Vice. As models in Ashley Williams, Claire Barrow, and Ryan Lo walked a runway, a trippy light show made it impossible to distinguish the real humans from the holograms. Via tablet, audience members could control visual effects with swipes of their fingers (think Etch A Sketch on a huge stage).
Seeing your swipes appear in real-time was a kind of metaphor for how fast youth culture now spreads. When Madonna appeared on i-D in 1984––her first major magazine cover––she was mostly unknown. Today, it's more often on online platforms and social media where it-girls make the transition to celebrities. Which, clearly, is where the new i-D website comes in. According to editor Holly Shackleton, the site "reflects the inclusivity of the Internet," with sections that enable user participation and a soon to launch 'My i-D' feature which will allow you to "tailor your experience around what you do and do not like."
But it was also a priority for the magazine to "keep [its] integrity and present information in a visually captivating and interesting way" when creating the new site, Holly said. Visit it and you'll see what she means: the design looks a lot like an on-screen version of some of our old favorite i-D covers, with full-screen photos, minimal text, and a trademark wink every so often. Nostalgic for the days of young Madonna (if not so much for stapled magazines), we asked Holly to select her five favorite moments from the i-D archives.
The launch party for i-D's n
ew website last week in New York was in no way stapled together, nor was there much that could be called punk, at least in the traditional sense. At the event, called "Future Fashion," a runway show incarnated what the magazine hopes will be its digital future with new owner Vice. As models in Ashley Williams, Claire Barrow, and Ryan Lo walked a runway, a trippy light show made it impossible to distinguish the real humans from the holograms. Via tablet, audience members could control visual effects with swipes of their fingers (think Etch A Sketch on a huge stage).Seeing your swipes appear in real-time was a kind of metaphor for how fast youth culture now spreads. When Madonna appeared on i-D in 1984––her first major magazine cover––she was mostly unknown. Today, it's more often on online platforms and social media where it-girls make the transition to celebrities. Which, clearly, is where the new i-D website comes in. According to editor Holly Shackleton, the site "reflects the inclusivity of the Internet," with sections that enable user participation and a soon to launch 'My i-D' feature which will allow you to "tailor your experience around what you do and do not like."
But it was also a priority for the magazine to "keep [its] integrity and present information in a visually captivating and interesting way" when creating the new site, Holly said. Visit it and you'll see what she means: the design looks a lot like an on-screen version of some of our old favorite i-D covers, with full-screen photos, minimal text, and a trademark wink every so often. Nostalgic for the days of young Madonna (if not so much for stapled magazines), we asked Holly to select her five favorite moments from the i-D archives.