Web: New digital archive showcases 185 years of The Spectator magazine
For this of us passionate about print media, it’s sometimes useful to look to the past to help contextualise what might play out in the future. For that reason, moves by The Spectator – the oldest continuously-published magazine in the English-speaking world – to digitise its 185-year archive will be of interest to many. It’s a work-in-progress at the moment, but the opportunity to delve back to the very first issue launched in 1828, and to chart over the ensuing decades the changes in content, tone and of course design makes for a real treasure trove for those of us still fighting the good print fight here in 2013.
The Spectator archive page
The masthead of the first ever issue of The Spectator
A cartoon from the archive
An 1886 piece about the growing problems in The Balkans
Share Article
Further Info
About the Author
—
Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.
