Published in London from March 1965 – October 1975, Nova Magazine broke boundaries in the subjects it covered as well as it’s design, layout, typography and photography.
Nova described itself as ‘a new kind of magazine for a new kind of woman’ and while other publications played it safe, Nova documented the great social changes of the swinging 60’s with lengthy articles on controversial topics to educate its intellectual reader. It was revolutionary in documenting the avant-garde of the time.
Founded by a personal hero of mine, the creative force Molly Parkin and from 1967 onwards her secretary Caroline Baker took over the reigns of fashion editor and shot with photographers such as Helmut Newton, Hans Feurer, Byron Newman, Sarah Moon, Brian Duffy and Harri Peccinotti.
Nova had an entirely new way of looking at fashion, While other magazines followed the trends of the Paris catwalk, Caroline Baker would style models in clothes she had bought from army and navy surplus stores and suits from Moss Bros and truly invented street styling in magazines as we know it today. In a great interview by 10 magazine, Caroline Baker is quoted as saying…
“You were just trying to be a bit shocking at Nova, break the rules; that was what Nova magazine was basically about. And I had an editor who encouraged that.” Caroline Baker, 10 Magazine Interview… http://10magazine.com/post/6174058953/caroline-baker-the-freestyler
Least not to mention much celebrated art direction from David Hillman which was groundbreaking with its bold minimal type and empty white space. He mentions in an interesting interview on MagCulture.com as the reason to Nova’s end being the result of a shoot to find the current prime minister Edward Heath a date off going horribly wrong and causing that issue to be scrapped. http://magculture.com/blog/?p=587
In a time where Nova had broken all the boundaries and covered all the taboo subjects it could, it was also increasingly hard to gain advertisers for a magazine with such out there tendancys. What made it great could also not allow it to continue.
Nova was briefly brought back into publication in 1999 and I had dreams of arriving in London and interning for them thinking they might love an intern called Nova. Unfortunately the new incarnation of Nova only ran for 6 issues (all of which I have saved since). I loved the art direction of the logo by Big Activ
novadandoblog 
Pingback: Nova remodels the Queen « magCulture.com/blog