18 January 1993, San Francisco - Innovative editorial is only part of the story behind Wired's premier issue,
according to creative director John Plunkett and his partner Barbara Kuhr.

"From the beginning, we decided that Wired should be as visually powerful as it is intellectually stimulating," Plunkett said. "In the age of MTV, anything less would have been reactionary. We employed the technology we write about, and opted for a bigger book, a full nine-inches wide, to showcase our art. We printed at a quality printer, and we used six-color rather than four-color printing."

Innovative editorial made for innovative design, Plunkett said. "Conceptually, the design of Wired is based entirely on its content. This is a rare luxury in the age of information overload, where design is so often eye-candy, not mind-food."

"While Wired is an attempt to create a new type of media," Plunkett said, "our work is still essentially story-telling. Everything we do as designers involves communicating an idea through words and pictures, ideally in an engaging and intelligent manner that's appropriate to the content."

Wired features the work of the famous and soon to be famous. World-renown photographer Neil Selkirk shot the cover, a jarring image of writer Bruce Sterling. Inside, Wired features an eclectic mix of media styles including color photography, line drawings, electronic design and electronic collages. Contributors include Stuart Cudlitz from Colossal Pictures in San Francisco, Nick Philip, a London-based album and rave designer, and Erik Adigard, a French-born designer now working on the West coast.

Innovations in Production and Printing

Wired is totally digital. It was edited, designed and laid-out on networked Macintosh computers. Prepress was performed by Danbury Printing, one of the best prepress houses in the United States, on a digital Scitex system. Located in Danbury, CT, Danbury Printing has built its reputation on superb electronic prepress and high-quality printing, from annual reports to Sotheby catalogs. Last year it made the strategic decision to enter the high end of the magazine printing market, and ordered a six-color M-1000B Harris Heidelberg web press, one of the most advanced presses in the world.

"Modern technology allowed us to produced the magazine on the West Coast, and do the pre-press on the East Coast," said Wired Editor Louis Rossetto. "We used modems and broadband as well as overnight couriers and air freight. And we used the Kodak Approval proofing system - a new digital proofing process which provides a better prepress proof, on the actual paper stock, before any film is made or stripped."

The premiere issue of Wired was Danbury's first print job on their new Harris Heidelberg. Even though Heidelberg technicians were still installing the $8 million press just two weeks before the print job, the equipment performed flawlessly.

"Despite the stress of working with a new client, a client that's located on the opposite coast, on a new press, on an insanely tight timetable, production of Wired went exceedingly smoothly. The magazine was delivered on time, and under budget," Plunkett said.

Prior to forming their partnership, Plunkett and partner Barbara Kuhr worked for a number of well-known design firms; including Pentagram, Chermayeff & Geismar, Saul Bass and Sussman/Prejza. Their most public work before publication of Wired was the signage program for the Musee du Louvre, done in conjunction with I.M. Pei and Carbone Smollan. Plunkett also spent three years developing the Colorcurve color system with Jim Sebastian, which received the I.D.S.A.'s IDEA award for industrial design excellence in 1990. Plunkett studied industrial design at Parsons in New York and received a masters in graphic design from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1976.

Full-fledged members of the Wired generation, Plunkett and Kuhr left New York two years ago to open their office in Park City, Utah, from which they commute to San Francisco and New York. "We realized the technology would allow consultants to live wherever they want," Kuhr said. "We fly to New York or the west coast for the same meetings we would have had if we were still on West 19th Street. Everything else is done by phone, fax and modem."


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