The Substance of Things Editorial

Giddy. That’s the best word to describe the design mind editorial team as we gathered in London’s Paddington Station to take the train to Oxford this past July for the TEDGlobal conference. Jacob Zukerman, intrepid art director, Tim Leberecht, stalwart publisher, and yours truly, worried editor, were meeting Antonia Ward, our British guide and local wordsmith, at the statue of Paddington Bear (pronounced “bare” in American English and “bey-ah” in Antonia’s UK English — yes, we’d already given each other plenty of good-natured guff over our accents).

One might expect there to be a statue of Paddington Bear in Paddington Station — the bear has been a popular literary character for English kids for generations — though one cannot be sure why, other than the similarity in name. What one would not expect is for the bear to be so small and so tucked away behind a partition, divorced from the main concourse, almost hidden under the nearby escalator. Did the sculptor botch the job? Did Michael Bond, the man who created Paddington Bear in 1958, have a falling out with executives at London metro? And indeed why is Paddington Bear in Paddington Station? Could it really be as obvious as the name, or is there more to the story?

Such is the inquisitive mind of a reporter, which was exactly what I was there to do, what we were all there to do — to investigate all sides of the TEDGlobal conference, onstage and off, find speakers to interview, parties to attend, ideas to chew on, and friends to make. In short, we were there to take part in the very theme of the conference, “The Substance of Things Not Seen” — and then figure out a way to mash it up into words and pictures for the next issue of design mind.

The giddiness was there in part for the obvious reason: a TED conference is the chance of a lifetime, an unusual opportunity to run headlong into some of the world’s greatest thinkers and doers and their ideas. “Giddy,” in this sense, could easily be exchanged with “thrilled.” But we were also giddy from anxiety. We had 96 pages to fill and design and five weeks to get it done, including having it printed, bound, and delivered into the hands of a growing readership that now includes the TEDGlobal attendees and the TED Book Club. These are tough audiences to impress.

So there we were, acting like students before a long field trip. Jacob and I ogled at a mini sushi bar in the terminal that had an automated belt of fresh fish rotating slowly past its customers. In a fit of junior-high humor we put a salt shaker on the conveyor, got an exasperated look from the guy working the kiosk, and giggled. Antonia got coffee for everyone (we didn’t need it). Tim admired his new, red Moleskine.

When we got on the train to Oxford, we all opened our laptops and snapped digital pics and tried to review the plan, which at that stage was the we-don’t-quite-know-what-to-expect plan (which is to say, the plan was “don’t let the chaos overwhelm you the entire week, but go ahead and jump in”). But we arrived in Oxford almost before we began, and just like that, the week started. And it didn’t stop. After 60 speakers, 700 attendees, a dozen interviews, five nightly hours of sleep, countless bottomless coffees, four late-night parties, three later-than-late-night parties, one speech, several blog posts, 50 business cards dispersed and received, and one week, it was done.  Or at least TEDGlobal was done. After that we all went to San Francisco to make a magazine (scratch everything off of the above list except the lack of nightly sleep and the coffee).

Now, what we have — what you can also have — is our most ambitious magazine to date. This issue’s Guest Editor, Bruno Giussani, whose day job is being the European director of TED, gave us invaluable access to the speakers, the back stage, and the official TED photographs. Both he and TED.com Editor Emily McManus also offered great guidance along the way, so that we were able to put together something special. The TEDGlobal issue is larger in page count than the last three print efforts (96 pages up from 80). Plus, we’ve completely redesigned the layout, and there are at least twice the number of contributing writers, editors, photographers, designers, and illustrators. In addition to several great contributions from fellow frogs (in particular, Laura Richardson’s article on synethsesia and her corresponding interview with fellow mind-perception ingénue Beau Lotto, as well as Jared Ficklin’s innovative computer translation of an Imogen Heap song into a visual painting), the articles, interviews, and photographs in the magazine are world-class.

One of my favorites is a display of the photography of Taryn Simon, a TEDGlobal speaker and a young artist whose prints are already in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Modern (London), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). I interviewed her for the article and asked her about her creative process.

Another Q&A in the magazine is with Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss adventurer who in 1999 with his partner Brian Jones, was the first to circumnavigate the world in a balloon. He’s a trained psychologist, which made for interesting insights into the philosophy of getting lost.

I’m also partial to the TEDGlobal timeline — a multi-page layout spread out over the six panels of the inside front and back gate-fold covers that tells the story of the conference in photos and tweets. Our friends at Emotive Brand donated their time and talent to the graphic design, and it rocks. Many of the magazine’s articles are reproduced on this Web site, but not that one. You can only find it in the hard copy. I recommend it.

In the end, choosing favorites isn’t fair because they’re bound to change the more I go back to the magazine and pick a new page. We interviewed the pop singer Imogen Heap about her new album, Ellipse, and political scientist Parag Khanna about his new book The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century. Victor Chan, the co-founder of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, spoke to us about world peace. Journalist and author Misha Glenny told us about what it was like interviewing European mobsters for his book McMafia: Seriously Organized Crime. And there’s more, including essays by TEDGlobal speaker and London-based architect Carolyn Steel, who wrote about a new model for feeding the world’s cities, journalist Evgeny Morozov, who takes a hard look at the US governments efforts at global social media outreach, and Becky Blanton, a writer who retells her story into homelessness and the journey back out.  All three spoke at TEDGlobal.

If you didn’t get a chance to go to Oxford, this magazine could very well be the next best thing. Without doubt, there remains many things left unseen, and those are probably better off that way. As the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley wrote — and I paraphrase — some things are dearer for their mystery.

As for the bear statue at Paddington Station, it is indeed there just because of the name. Bond, the creator, was inspired by a stuffed animal he bought near the train station in 1956. The first story takes place under the timetables, when a family finds the wayward bear sitting on his luggage with a sign around his neck that says “Wanted on Voyage.” They name him Paddington, after the station. 

— Sam Martin, Editor-in-Chief, design mind