Robert Newman was most recently the creative director of Reader’s Digest. He has been the creative director of Real Simple and the design director of Entertainment Weekly, New York, Details, Vibe, Inside, The Village Voice, and Guitar World. He was also the editor of The Rocket, a music and culture magazine based in Seattle.
Newman has been the consulting creative director for AARP magazine, Cottage Living, and O, the Oprah magazine. He led the creative team that redesigned TV Guide, and has been responsible for shaping the visual direction of numerous other publications. At Reader’s Digest he led the launch of app editions for both the iPad and Kindle Fire, and worked as creative consultant on the launch of the Adweek app.
Newman has worked with a wide array of magazines and newspapers, consulting on issues ranging from staffing to cover design to overall art direction. He has ongoing clients in publication design, app creation, book design, and more.
Newman and his teams have won over 500 design awards and medals. In 2004, he and his staff at Real Simple were spotlighted by Advertising Age magazine as the Creative Team of the Year. He was named one of the Folio: 40 in 2012, a list of “the industry’s most innovative and distinguished professionals.”
He is past president of the Society of Publication Designers, has been a guest lecturer at the Poynter Institute, and speaks regularly to groups and conferences about publication design, art direction, app creation, branding, and more. He writes and blogs frequently for a variety of online sites, and has an active social media presence with the popular Newmanology Facebook and Tumblr pages, and his @newmanology Twitter feed. Newman lives on the Upper West Side in New York City and in Taconic, Connecticut, with his daughters Ivy and Lillian Curry.
Illustration by David Cowles