Frank zachary biography

With the social poise that has long characterized his style, Frank Zachary reinvented himself at the age of 59. Celebrated, for more than 40 years, as an art director who had pioneered graphic innovations and creative photojournalism, he became the editor-in-chief of the oldest and most conservative magazine in America.

His first issues of Town & Country, a publication unapologetically dedicated to promoting the lifestyle of the upper classes, hit the newsstands in 1973, the year Picasso died. For Zachary’s admirers, and there were many among the smart readers of Holiday magazine where he had previously showcases his art directing talent, this career move was perceived as a defection of sorts, a retraction of his modernist principles.

“Yet Town & Country was the culmination of my whole career,” says Zachary today from his office at Heart Publications where in semi-retirement he generates new ideas and magazine projects. “Studying the rich is a matter of cardinal interest to me. As a journalist, I learned not to underestimate the role of the old aristocracy in shaping a place – its history, its landscape, its economy. But I never reported on the culture of affluence with adulation. I looked at the phenomenon with the dispassionate scrutiny of an anthropologist.”

Design critic Steven Heller who, as a teenager, impatiently awaited the next issue of Holiday magazine for its sheer visual thrill, is still puzzled by Zachary’s choice of topic. In 1989, he wrote the definitive profile of Zachary for Print magazine, but to this day, he still wonders why his hero got involved with the culture of old money.

“Frank is a discerning individual,” he told me recently over lunch, “It’s not like he picked the first job that came across his desk. Was he going to try to explain to the rest of us what it was like to be rich? It was the 1970s after all, and affluence was not a

Frank Zachary died last week at 101. He was a great art director turned editor, and I will be writing more tributes to him in the next weeks. For now, this is an essay adopted from a Print magazine story that I did when Frank finally received the AIGA medal in 1990.

Jazzways, edited by Frank Zachary, designed by Paul Rand.

If Frank Zachary was never born (or at least was in another profession), many esteemed photographers, illustrators, writers, graphic designers and art directors would probably be less esteemed, if not unknown, today. For almost 50 years Zachary has worn many hats in publishing, advertising and public relations as a writer, art director and editor. He has been the quintessential, behind-the-scenes catalyst—inspiring and directing talented people to do good work.

Zachary, the editor-in-chief of Town and Country magazine since 1972, has prominently appeared on various mastheads. In fact, as a young boy in 1962, this writer first saw him listed as the art director of Holiday. Without understanding the nature of either graphic design or art direction at the time, I was nonetheless inspired by the striking photography and witty illustration of this magazine, and I somehow intuited that Zachary had made it all happen. Without knowing him personally I decided to follow in his footsteps—I too wanted to be a magazine art director.

It was only many years later that I learned of Zachary’s extensive role not only in the development of this, one of the last great behemoth magazines, but of his contributions to magazine publishing in general and art direction specifically. He was the founding editor of the legendary Portfolio magazine, the short-lived journal of applied arts, brilliantly designed by Alexey Brodovitch. Portfolio became the paradigm of what a modern graphic and industrial arts magazine should be. And Holiday, for which he was both art director and managing editor, was more than just a stunning travel magazine, it was a wellspring for pho

As a kid, Holiday was the magazine I loved most. It came into my house along with Time, Life, National Geographic, and Boys Life, but Holiday’s beautiful photos, illustrations, and expansive size captured my interest. So did a name on its masthead under the words “Art Director”: Frank Zachary. I knew nothing about this romantic sounding title, other than thinking it had something to do with discovering and publishing all the great artwork in the magazine. And, if my assumption were correct, then that’s exactly what I would like to do after I graduated high school, if not before. That name on the masthead became my model. 

Rome issue of Holiday magazine | art directed by Frank Zachary

Frank Zachary, born in 1914, died this past Friday in his East Hampton home at 101 years old. He was one of the last of a generation of inveterate magazine impresarios, and his love for the medium was palpable. 

I had the extraordinarily good fortune to meet Frank in the early 1970s, over a decade after I had seen his name and long after he had left Holiday to become editor-in-chief of Town & Country. Others with whom he was close will doubtless offer professional and person tributes over the next few weeks—at least I hope so—mine is just a small piece of the enduring portrait of a monumental man who played such a role in my life that Veronique Vienne and I dedicated our book, The Education of an Art Director, to “Frank Zachary, art director, editor, patron of artists, designers, photographers, and art directors.” 

That was a heartfelt dedication but an insufficient epitaph. Truth is, there were very few real gentlemen and women in magazine publishing and Frank was undeniably rare. I have written before that he was the Catalyst-in-Chief referring to the fact that neither as editor nor art director was his ego—and the power demanded from it—greater than the sum of his magazines’ parts. As editor of the great, short-lived Port