PRINT Magazine

Austin, Texas, USA · Published by PRINT Holdings LLC

Overview

PRINT is America's longest-running publication devoted to graphic design and visual culture — founded in June 1940, it predates the field of graphic design as a recognized profession by decades, and has documented every major movement in the visual communication of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is now published as a digital-first platform at printmag.com, owned since late 2019 by PRINT Holdings LLC, an independent consortium of design industry veterans who rescued the brand from the bankruptcy of its previous corporate owner. The publication describes its mission as being "where creative people gather to inspire and build design dialogue," and frames its scope as encompassing everything from publication design, book covers, corporate branding, and typography to motion graphics, street art, exhibition design, and the social and political dimensions of how the visual environment is shaped. Under its current independent ownership, PRINT also convenes an annual design summit — Soul Over Scale, held in Seattle — focused on craft, depth, and the honest economics of creative professional life.

History: 1940 to the F+W Era

PRINT was founded in June 1940 by William Edwin Rudge, the third generation of a New Haven printing family, under the full title Print: A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts. The first issue was a technical and artistic tour de force: it included a treatise by William Addison Dwiggins — the designer who coined the term "graphic designer" in 1922 — a feature on illustrated books of the 1860s, and a history of wallpaper with actual pasted-in samples. The cover, designed by Howard Trafton (who had taught Saul Bass), depicted a flower-headed figure and the massive fingerprint of master typographer Bruce Rogers, and carried not a single word of text — not even the word "PRINT." It was, in other words, an object that demonstrated its subject rather than merely describing it.

The publication underwent a decisive transformation in 1962 when Martin Fox — a playwright with no background in graphic art — arrived as editor. Fox spent more than four decades at the helm, winning five National Magazine Awards and transforming PRINT from a technical trade journal into a general-interest publication that examined design in its social, political, and historical contexts. Under Fox, PRINT covered design as a form of cultural criticism: not just how things were made, but what they meant and why they mattered. Debbie Millman later served as editorial director before the brand's acquisition by F+W Media, a Cincinnati-based publisher that built a portfolio of special-interest magazines and books across craft, hobby, and professional fields. F+W Media ceased print publication of PRINT in 2017, with a promise to focus on its online presence; F+W declared bankruptcy in 2019.

The 2019 Rescue and Independent Rebirth

When F+W Media's assets became available through bankruptcy, a group of design industry veterans moved quickly to acquire the PRINT brand and Printmag.com from Peak Media Properties, the company that emerged from the F+W restructuring. PRINT Holdings LLC was formed by six partners: Debbie Millman, host of the long-running Design Matters podcast and former editorial director of PRINT; Steven Heller, the prolific design writer, critic, and former art director of the New York Times Book Review who had contributed to PRINT for decades; Andrew Gibbs and Jessica Deseo of Dieline, the premier packaging design publication; and Deb Aldrich and Laura Des Enfants of D'NA Company, who had served as PRINT's advertising directors. The acquisition was announced in December 2019. The new owners' stated ambition was not to simply restart the previous publication but to ask — from first principles — what PRINT should be in the twenty-first century, while honoring the 80 years of design history the brand represented.

Under independent ownership, PRINT has operated as a digital-first community and publication — publishing daily content across criticism, commentary, profiles, design education, and cultural reporting, without the institutional pressure of corporate media ownership or the quarterly production cycle of its print era. The new PRINT is explicitly interested in expanding the canon: covering designers outside the dominant Western European and American traditions, attending to the political and social dimensions of visual culture, and building genuine community among creative professionals rather than simply cataloguing industry product. The awards and honors of the F+W era — five National Magazine Awards, citations from the Society of Publication Designers, AIGA, the Art Directors Club, and the Type Directors Club — belong to the previous incarnation, but the intellectual lineage is continuous.

Content and Key Contributors

PRINT's daily content is organized around several persistent formats and contributors. The Daily Heller, written by Steven Heller, is the publication's flagship column — a daily dispatch on design history, visual culture, politics, and the intersection of art and society, drawing on Heller's unmatched knowledge of design history and his network of designers, artists, and thinkers worldwide. Heller has written more than 200 books on design; his column is the closest thing the design field has to a continuous record of what is being thought, made, and debated. Design Matters with Debbie Millman — which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2025 — is one of the longest-running podcasts in the world, an interview series in which Millman talks with designers, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and cultural figures about identity, creativity, and the meaning of design work. PRINT also publishes criticism, profiles, event coverage, and educational content from a wide range of contributors and serves as a platform for announcements and discussions from design institutions, award programs, and professional organizations. The Soul Over Scale summit, held annually in Seattle, convenes creative professionals for discussions about craft, the economics of independent work, and the future of design culture.

Access and Usage

PRINT is freely accessible at printmag.com. Content is organized by topic — design news, criticism, education, typography, branding, illustration, motion graphics, and sustainability — and updated daily. The Daily Heller is available through the site and by email subscription. Design Matters is available through all standard podcast platforms and through the PRINT site. Information about the Soul Over Scale summit, including tickets and speaker lineups, is available at the PRINT events page. Advertising and community sponsorship opportunities can be explored through the contact information on the About page. PRINT maintains active social media presences on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter.