Photo by Jim Fiscus.

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Many thanks to prop/wardrobe stylist Gabrielle Rosenberg, who featured the above image by Jim Fiscus—key art for the FX series Louie—in Adweek‘s Talent Gallery!

Related: Jim Fiscus’ “Louie” poster nominated by IMP Awards

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Facebook Studio.

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From Facebook Studio: “It is an open platform, allowing agencies and brands to submit their work and to comment on and discuss peers’ campaigns. The campaigns will be sorted into galleries based on most-recently uploaded campaigns, most-shared campaigns, region and language, and what friends are saying. A selection of the best work will be displayed in the Spotlight section.”

Check it out here: http://facebook-studio.com

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In other news…

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Adweek has revealed its 2011 Hot List of the year’s top magazines. Among the relative newcomers, like Food Network Magazine and People StyleWatch, the list includes quite a few veteran titles, among them Rolling Stone, GQ, and Cosmopolitan. Read more here.

Speaking of Adweek, SPD looks at Pentagram’s big redesign of the trade mag, which was inspired by “the spirit of the magazine’s 1980s heyday.” Story and spreads here.

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Advertising Age’s “Agency Issue” is now out, with stories including one on “How the Recession Changed the Luxury-Advertising Landscape.” An excerpt:

Boutique fashion shops across the board say spending has largely bounced back after a rough 2009 and 2010. Still, they believe the fashion- and luxury-advertising landscape will never be the same again. And that’s probably a good thing.

“The recession was the best thing that ever happened to the fashion industry,” said Richard Christiansen, founder-creative director of Chandelier Creative. “A lot of what was going on before the recession felt very formulaic. … The recession was a great opportunity to get a bit more aggressive and dip your toe into digital or something nontraditional.”

I wonder if that means they’ll be more daring with respect to the photography they commission, too… Read more here.

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The British Journal of Photography runs a monthly discussion night in London, and the most recent one took on the (eternal) question of whether photography is art. “Art historians tend not to take photography seriously until it’s seen on the wall, and that’s a shame,” said photographer/lecturer/curator David Campany. More here.

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Wieden+Kennedy's Old Spice Red Zone campaign ruled.

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Wieden+Kennedy, whose Old Spice Red Zone campaign became a pop-culture phenomenon, was named AdweekMedia’s Agency of the Year. “…the Portland-Ore.-headquartered indie has had one of its best performing years in its 28-year history. It saw client growth in both Portland and New York, and increased its U.S. revenue and billings nearly 22 percent (billings to $1.5 billion, revenue $145 million).”

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Magculture.com posted its look back at the year in magazine covers, including Elle‘s surprising soft-focus portrait of Kylie Minogue.

Is that you, Kylie?

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Magtastic Blogsplosion’s “Magazine Year in Review” covers a wide swath of the publishing industry, from Creative Review’s redesign by Paul Pensom to the independent, and widely praised, food magazine Put a Egg on It.

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Some promising news from Ad Age: “Ad Industry Employment Is Starting to See a (Slow) Rebound. Digital Accounts for One in Eight Media Jobs” and “U.S. Seeing Solid Gains in 2010 Agency Revenue, but Agencies Still Cautious About Adding to Headcount.”

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From Folio magazine: “There were 193 new magazine launches in 2010, while 176 folded, according to magazine database MediaFinder.com. That’s down from 596 magazine closures in 2009.”

And from Mediaweek: “The fastest-growing titles of 2010 were newbies Food Network Magazine, which grew 79 percent; and People StyleWatch, up 49 percent. … But others with a distinct point of view and/or strong integrated sales approaches also did well, like the 153-year-old Atlantic, which was up 24 percent. Other big gainers were Elle Décor, up 35 percent; and Fast Company, up 27 percent.”

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BBC Four has posted its excellent series “The Genius of Photography” at YouTube. Below is a link to Episode 4, “a fascinating look at Robert Frank’s odyssey through 50s America, William Klein’s one-man assault on the sidewalks of New York, Garry Winogrand’s charting of the human comedy in Central Park Zoo, Tony Ray Jones’s dissection eccentricity at the English seaside, and finally, William Eggleston’s guide to Memphis and the American South. Episode four of the series also examines the arrival of colour as a credible medium for serious photographers, as controversial at the time as Dylan going electric.”

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Forbes announced “The Year’s Most Unforgettable Ad Campaigns,” among them Betty White’s Snickers spot.

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A pair of young filmmakers are trying to raise $20,000 by March to help complete their documentary on street photographer Vivian Maier.

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Wired, which Adweek has named Magazine of the Decade (congratulations, Wired!), is sponsoring a photo contest inspired by the signature stripes on the mag’s spine. What do you need to do? Take a great stripe-y photo (see examples, courtesy of Wired, below). And submit it by midnight tonight, Pacific time.

For more on the contest, go here. To enter, head over to their Facebook page.

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James Cooper of Saatchi & Saatchi and Brian Morrissey of Adweek have posted their picks for the best and worst ad-agency holiday cards over at the AdFreak blog. Is it a little Grinchy to judge expressions of holiday cheer? Maybe. Is their survey exhaustive? Probably not. But whatever, it’s interesting to see what people come up with for their holiday card—and to hear unvarnished opinions about the results.

Here’s one that made the “best” list: a rap video by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in which old school and new school face off. Sample lyric: “New school, I’m sick of your sh*t/We started this business/Or did you forget?”

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And now, here’s our holiday card, which we sent out the old-school way, by snail mail:

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The photo on the front is "Dixie Street II, Indiana, USA 2000," by Nadav Kander.

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The sentiments we expressed are old-fashioned too, which is to say they’re completely sincere. Happy holidays, everyone. I’ll be putting the blog on hiatus till Monday, January 4. See you then.

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Afar magazine.

In the old days, when someone started a new publication, it was called a magazine launch. In our post-print world, though, such an event is referred to as the launch of a “media brand.” That means a highly functioning destination website with original content, including video; it means television programming; it means products.

This is what I gather from the plans that have been made for Afar, a travel magazine that will debut August 18. As Adweek reports today, publishers AFAR Media are rolling out the publication first and over the next year or so, with related initiatives to follow. Here’s a quick description of Afar, direct from the magazine’s media kit:

“AFAR is the media brand for experiential travelers who have both the desire and the means to immerse themselves in other cultures, to engage with local people, and to enrich their own lives.” The magazine’s tagline: “Where travel can take you.” (It’s kind of like something Yogi Berra might say if he’d been hanging out with, say, Paul Coehlo.)

Adweek, which was given an exclusive preview of the magazine, says the premiere issue features stories on “cow fighting in Switzerland, treehouse lodging around the world and bunny chow (a South African—and rabbit-free—street food). The cover depicts a rocky Moroccan coastline.”

No word on what the plan is for photography. Do they have the budget and desire to commission images that are above and beyond? (Terrible pun, but a serious and worthwhile question.) The director of photography is Tara Guertin, who was a photo editor at Lucky and Talk magazine s. I did a quick Google search on her and found her on Twitter (she’s @afarfotos) and lightstalkers.org (in April, she was looking for photographers in Zanzibar and Chaing Rai). She’s also part of a Q&A series posted in April at Stone Thrower. The topic was “The Worst Mistakes Photographers Make.” Here’s what Tara wrote:

“In general, what comes to mind first and foremost is lack of enthusiasm for the work, and thus not putting 100% into it. Some young photographers can have a sense of entitlement that drives me crazy! The worst mistake a photographer could make on a shoot would be not shooting enough … too many people have too many ideas how things should look, especially on the advertising side!”

I’m looking forward to seeing the first issue of Afar, and to seeing where Tara wants to take us, photographically speaking.

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