Radical, tolerant, enquiring, pro-consumer, lid-off, helpful. It’ll be no-holds-barred, without being noisy. It should have bite without malice. Wave-of-the-future type stuff, when possible. Whiff of scandal… Serious. Non-expert. Funny.”
In early 1964, this was future editor Michael Davie’s vision for the planned Observer Magazine. The project was a long-ruminated riposte to the Sunday Times, which had launched its “Colour Section” in February 1962 with an in-your-face graphic cover of Jean Shrimpton wearing Mary Quant, photographed by David Bailey: your early 1960s cool bingo card almost filled before you had even turned the first page. It was a revolutionary break with the postwar era of newsprint rationing, when papers ran only two or three pictures a week.
