Fortune, Vol. 1 No. 1, February 1930
The first issue of Fortune, Henry Luce's business monthly, sold only by subscription at ten dollars a year, with T. M. Cleland as art editor and photographs by Margaret Bourke-White.
What it is
The first issue of Fortune, Henry Luce's business monthly, sold only by subscription at ten dollars a year, with T. M. Cleland as art editor and photographs by Margaret Bourke-White. Its stated purpose is to reflect industrial life in word and picture as the finest skyscraper reflects it in stone and steel. The features treat companies as stories: Swift and Company and the hog, a 10,000-word survey of group and branch banking built around A. P. Giannini's Bank of Italy, the glass trade from Lalique to the union shops, the Hotel Biltmore's accounts down to linen and chipped china, the living Rothschilds, and "Color in Industry" on the sudden fashion for colored sinks, cars and clocks. A closing note explains the design: gravure pictures on uncoated paper, Baskerville text and covers made as original prints. Prestige ads from Crane, Campbell-Ewald, aircraft makers and cities surround it.
Why read it now
Read it as the template for business writing aimed at executives, and as a case of a publication that priced and designed itself to pick its audience. Three things still work. First, it explains companies through operating numbers and trade-offs: the Biltmore piece shows a profit of about $650,000 on $6,000,000 of receipts and argues that letting linen and china standards slip would raise profit but cost reputation. Numbers with a point of view remain the business content people cite and share. Second, the house ad sells the magazine by listing where it will take the reader, from furnaces to boardrooms, a promise of access rather than a list of features. Third, the design note ties each production choice to the reader's eye. Dated: the class snobbery in its asides, the confident tone months after the 1929 crash, and ads for mausoleums and private amphibian planes. Use it by writing one client case built on real operating figures and the choices behind them.
Passages worth keeping
FORTUNE'S purpose is to reflect Industrial Life in ink and paper and word and picture as the finest skyscraper reflects it in stone and steel and architecture
تعد المجلة بأن تصور عالم الصناعة بالكلمة والصورة بالجودة نفسها التي تبني بها ناطحات السحاب، فهي تبيع مستوى لا مجرد أخبار.
If this year the Biltmore were willing to let its standard slip, it might well show a profit of $1,000,000. But in doing so, it would lose that priceless jewel, reputation.
خفض المعايير يرفع الربح في سنة واحدة، لكنه يضيّع السمعة التي هي أثمن ما يملكه الفندق.
The Packer does more for less money than any other industrialist.
يفتتح المقال بحكم واضح عن صناعة اللحوم ثم يثبته بالأرقام، فالقارئ يعرف الفكرة قبل التفاصيل.
Even the family car was black, or some dull, dark color allied to blackness.
قبل سنوات قليلة كانت المنتجات بلا ألوان تقريبًا، ثم صار اللون وسيلة لبيع الأشياء اليومية.
The design of Fortune is based upon its function of presenting a clear and readable text profusely illustrated with pictures, mostly photographic, in a form ample and agreeable to the eye.
التصميم يخدم وظيفة واضحة: نص سهل القراءة وصور كثيرة في صفحة مريحة للعين، لا زينة لذاتها.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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