by Diana Lazar

Award winning and one of Europe’s most renown editorial designers Mark Porter lived in Scotland until he was six years old, after which he moved and grew up in the south of England.  

“I love Scotland and I might move back there one day, but I haven’t lived there since I was very small,” Porter said.  

His father’s engineering background was one of the reasons Porter got interested in art and design.  

“Before computers, my father used to do engineering drawings at home. He had a drawing board and technical pens. I started doing drawings using his beautiful pens,” Porter said. 

A technical pen, also known as a Rapidograph pen. Source: Pexels 

While at school, Porter worked as a labourer on the construction of a motorway near his home. 

“We were a middle-class household, so I got to meet different people who I normally wouldn’t have met. It’s made me be grateful for being able to make a living doing what I do, knowing people have much tougher jobs than I do. 

“I tried to keep it quiet, but it came out that I was going to Oxford, and I thought people might resent that, but everyone was lovely and told me that they’re grateful I’m not going to do what they do for the rest my life,’” Porter added. 

Porter studied modern languages at Oxford University. He lived in Spain for a year as part of his course, teaching teenagers English.  

“It was a very small town. It wasn’t glamorous. There were no other British people there and I had to speak Spanish all day, every day, so at that time I spoke fluently. I used to dream and think in Spanish. It was weird,” he said.  

Porter got his first design job on a magazine about wine, selling advertising to Spanish winemakers.  

“I hated being a salesman, but I was interested in design. It was a very small magazine, and it was pretty badly designed, so I redesigned it, showed it to the editors, and they decided that they liked it better than what they had. That was just enough to get me a job on a proper magazine,” he said. 

His next job was for Expression which was a magazine for people with American Express cards.  

“It was a professional setup with good art direction and good budgets to spend on photography and illustration. When I was there, I was conscious that everybody else had been to art college and I hadn’t, so I had a lot of imposter syndrome. I expected people to say, ‘you’re not a proper designer, get out of here. 

“I learned an enormous amount there and went on to work on a lot of other magazines, which is how I really learned my trade,” Porter added. 

Source: Pixabay

Porter had a personal relationship with The Guardian before his redesign of it got named best designed newspaper in the world.  

“My dad used to read The Guardian and we would do the crosswords together, so when I came to redesign it, it was quite emotional for me because I had the memories of growing up with my father as a Guardian reader,” he said.  

When he was younger, Porter looked up to the idea of getting a D&AD (Design and Art Direction) Award.   

“The awards looked like stubby pencils. My art director from Expression had a few of them in his office and I used to think ‘wow he’s really made it.’ When I was still doing The Guardian magazine, before I took over the whole newspaper, I won a D&AD award. A yellow pencil. That was the moment I thought ‘okay, I can really do this’ because that was the symbol to me of what a proper designer was. 

“When I did The Guardian redesign, I won a black pencil (the most prestigious D&AD award; reserved for ground-breaking work), which was unusual because they only give out one or two a year. Then, I really thought I had made it. That was probably the most important project of my career because it’s what gave me the reputation and profile which enabled me to do other things,” he added.

Mark Porter in the TuDublin recording studio. Source: Diana Lazar 

The rise of digital media has changed his career in more than one way.   

“I enjoy doing digital designs but it’s a very different kind of challenge. Now that you see everybody’s work all over the world, it’s hard to do something new. With almost everything you do; someone can find some project from Brazil or Vietnam that looks a bit like what you did,” Porter said. 

Porter had a roller-coaster journey working with the late Tibor Kalman.  

“It was amazing and infuriating. He was quite a temperamental and difficult guy, like a lot of geniuses are, so he drove me crazy. We had a layout in Colors that we ended up doing 17 different ways because he kept saying we could make it better and, in the end, he concluded that the first one I did was the best. 

“He was full of brilliant ideas. He changed the ways I thought about design, the way that I judged my own work and the purpose of what I was doing,” he added. 

Porter shared some of his experiences of working with journalists. 

“It always amazes me how obsessed journalists are with credit. What they care most is about getting their name at the front of a newspaper. When I was working at The Guardian, most of the journalists cared about what the people at The Times thought about what they’re writing, not what the audience thought. Sometimes, I have to remind people that they’re working for the audience, not for themselves,” he said. 

Porter had some advice for anyone starting out in the creative media industry. 

“Be as adaptable as you can and go into things with an open mind. When I started off my career, it was all print and I thought it was never going to change. The other thing is to try to work with the best people that you can because that’s how I built my career. I was lucky as a junior designer to work with great creative directors. I didn’t get my design education in college, but I did in business,” he added.