THE FUTURE IS HYBRID

In the world of design, few names stand out as prominently as that of Mike Meiré. With a career spanning decades and an impressive portfolio of work in various creative fields, his expertise in magazine design and unique approach to projects have garnered him recognition worldwide. From his wealth of experience in editorial design, he shares insights into his own creative process, from initial concepts to final execution, and reveals the complicated mixture of continuous control and playful anarchy behind his magazine layouts. As the digital era shapes the future of magazine design, Mike discusses emerging trends and technologies, and elucidates the fascinating intersection of design, NFTs and AI.

Mike Meiré will also be joining us as a speaker at Forward Festival 2026 in Frankfurt.

This interview was originally published in the Forward Print Magazine #6.

When approaching a new design project, what steps do you typically take to understand the client's needs and objectives? How do you balance your own creative vision with the requirements of the project?
Over the years, I have been consistently involved in the world of magazines, starting with the launch of my own art and culture magazine, APART, back in 1983. Since then, I have taken on the role of Art Director in diverse fields, including business, culture, fashion, philosophy, politics, and architecture. In this role, I initially select projects based on content, but then also collaborate closely with the editor-in-chief, considering their approach and ability to open out new perspectives within familiar contexts. I strive to carefully weigh up whether it is worthwhile investing my time in their project. Creating a magazine is a commitment that often stretches beyond its intended schedule, making it more of a calling than a conventional profession.


What are some of the most challenging aspects of your work as a designer? How do you overcome these challenges and maintain your motivation and passion for your work?
I always try to align my approach with the editorial team's vision, forming a kind of subtle complicity with them. This way, I avoid establishing an overly personal signature, keeping it more intriguing for myself as well. I can freely navigate from project to project without being bound by a rigid style of my own. The key is to engage with others, identify potential overlaps in cultural understanding, and then respond to them purposefully in my design or consciously rebel against them. By establishing and occasionally subverting the rules defined for each editorial design, the magazine remains an entertaining companion for its readers, blending continuous control with playful anarchy.


When it comes to designing a magazine, how does your work process typically unfold, from the initial concept to the final design?
In my Factory, I collaborate with a team of exceptional designers, each with their own distinct style. Depending on the project, I assemble a team of two or three designers, and we kick off with an initial meeting. During this session, I typically provide an initial creative impulse, supported by visual sketches and a description of the design direction I envision. We then enter trial and error phases, where I take on the role of a curator, extracting the essence from the flow of typographies and layouts. This essence serves as my internal compass as we move into the actual workflow with actual content.

Magazine covers are often the first point of contact for readers. How do you approach designing magazine covers to grab attention, convey the essence of the content and entice readers to pick up the magazine?
Title design is a distinct discipline, no longer confined to editorial design, where the primary focus is on guiding readers or adapting content for readability. Title design is about provocation and impulse. It revolves solely around evoking stimuli and setting the tone. It's about simplicity and striking messages. Forget the content; it delves into the aesthetic codes of the timeless: coolness, beauty, sex, terror, pop – everything one desires, in order to embody a sense of modernity and self-expression, and present it to the world.


In an era of increasing digital consumption, how do you see the future of magazine design evolving? What emerging trends or technologies do you anticipate will have a significant impact on the way magazines are designed and consumed?
We are currently witnessing a drop in magazine circulation, which may be attributed to increased paper costs, reduced advertisements, and streamlining of product portfolios by individual publishers. Additionally, our growing reliance on newsletters, blogs, and other digital platforms to fulfill our daily information needs has inevitably led to newspapers becoming niche products, aside from a kind of yellow press. However, this shift also makes magazines more precious when viewed and designed as collector's items. Magazine design can naturally evolve in two possible directions: one deeply analog, with a classic appearance that stands in contrast to the call-to-action effect design of digital media, and the other reflecting digital interface surfaces with icons and 3D enrichments in typography and graphics. Personally, I am intrigued by a rather hybrid form that incorporates elements from both worlds. I am drawn to the clash of opposites; the interplay between "good" and "bad" taste, and the juxtaposition of high and low. In digital consumption, the focus lies on efficiency and readability in content presentation. However, isn't the glitch, the bug in the system, the more fascinating element for print? What is printed remains, while the digital realm is constantly evolving – both have their appeal. As magazine designers, we should perhaps pay closer attention to the flaws in digital consumption. There is something profoundly subversive about it, which I consider an essential quality in the history of magazine making.

But nevertheless, we live from the Future and not the Past, therefore AI will undoubtedly challenge many aspects of the work of designing magazines. They are becoming more interactive, personalized, and digitally accessible, evolving to provide a more engaging experience for readers. They may incorporate interactive elements, like videos and augmented reality. Social media integration fosters community engagement and interaction between readers and authors. Furthermore, sustainability is emphasized through eco-friendly practices and digital alternatives.

Print and digital platforms offer unique opportunities and challenges. How do you approach designing for each medium? Are there any key differences in your design process or considerations when designing for print versus digital?
Print and digital design differ significantly in their approach. Print is linear, with clear pagination for orientation, while digital is interactive and intuitive, with dynamic elements like moving formats, font sizes, and videos. Digital design prioritizes functional architecture for efficient information access, making it suitable for frequent use. On the other hand, print design allows for exploration and getting lost in the content. Both channels have different user expectations. Digital design requires knowledge of programming trends and seamless information orchestration. It aims for high efficiency while maintaining entertainment value. Magazines, on the other hand, are cherished for their unique character, poetry, and disruption, and are appealing for both their information density and emotional connection. In the long run, I would say websites want to be used while magazines want to be loved.


In your opinion, what are some of the emerging trends or technologies that will have a significant impact on the field of design in the coming years? How are you adapting and preparing for these changes?
We regularly exchange ideas within the team and conduct training sessions for all units in the Factory. Lifelong learning is the new standard. We are generation BETA: Just a month after buying a product, the first update is already released. The times when products were developed to perfection seem to be gone. Instead, we, as consumers, ideally become part of the development process. This gives us the opportunity to co-create the products through rapid feedback, participation and engagement.


NFTs have gained significant attention and popularity in recent years. Can you share your perspective on the intersection of design and NFTs? How do you approach designing unique and visually compelling NFT artworks?
NFTs, at their core, serve as marketing mechanisms rather than being an artistic medium in and of themselves, except for cases like long-form generative art. The visual culture within the realm of blockchain-based art often diverges significantly from that of traditional art or design contexts. However, what's intriguing is the opportunity to engage with this distinct, and relatively novel, form of visual-artistic communication and decode its conventions. Moreover, this discipline of creating art through NFTs necessitates an exploration of new digital tools for production, ranging from Cinema4D and Midjourney to coding languages and real-time environments like TouchDesigner.

Can you share a notable project or experience where you designed an NFT? What were the unique challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them? What was the impact or reception of the NFT in the marketplace?
In early 2022, I initiated my H.P.P.Y. NFT project, a series of 10 artworks inspired by my Grid Paintings developed a few years ago. My Grid Paintings, in turn, emerged from my engagement with the redesign of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). I often observe how, in retrospect, everything is interconnected, one thing building upon another. This holistic perspective gives meaning to the whole, even though it ultimately results in abstractions.

When tasked with redesigning the NZZ, particular attention was given to page layout and architecture, alongside typography and image composition. This process led to the creation of formal grids, providing a structural framework for NZZ's content and aiding readers' orientation. Reflecting on these redesigned newspaper pages revealed the prioritization of everyday information, with page compositions following the medium's economy. By painting over these text columns, abstract images emerged in my studio – artworks that reference the formal language of Modernism and its avant-garde status, but within the context of ordinary everyday objects, such as a newspaper page.

When the opportunity arose to design my first NFT series, I aimed to transcend this analog, two-dimensional design gesture and enter into the virtual realm, breaking boundaries by incorporating textures from the gaming world into an abstract 3D architecture. In line with sustainability discussions, I chose to mint the H.P.P.Y. Edition on OBJKT, a marketplace for clean NFTs operating with the Tezos cryptocurrency.


Can you talk about one of your most memorable design projects? What was the concept behind it, and what were the specific design challenges you encountered? How did you overcome those challenges, and what was the final outcome?
Besides developing and establishing the economic magazine Brand eins, which has been a firm fixture in the German-speaking region for 20 years, with its distinctive photography that sparked the "new German school" during the New Economy era, blending authenticity with modest yet classically inspired typography – it is now an iconic media presence, especially due to its monthly covers that often create significant media buzz – and alongside the international cultural magazine 032c from Berlin, where my redesign in 2007 earned the label of "The New Ugly" for brutally stretching fonts against conventional taste, there's another project I want to mention: GARAGE. The founder, Dasha Zhukova, visited my Factory with her team in 2011, and the result was a unique collaboration on thirteen issues, exploring the boundaries between fashion, art, craftsmanship, and technology, in dialogue with the internationally most influential photographers, authors, artists, and brands of that time. One particularly important and groundbreaking collaboration was with Jeff Koons' studio. Using 3D data from one of his sculptures, we developed an early version of a VR App here in Cologne, an augmentation that allowed the Lady Bug to virtually appear on the cover of that issue when viewed through a smartphone. This marked the birth of a hybrid discipline, where print and digital playfully merged for the first time. It was followed by other brand collaborations, such as with MARVEL, or Beats by Dr. Dre, Apple, and advertising scenarios with Fendi, for example, that we now know as standard through QR codes, extending content from print into the digital realm.

How do you incorporate AI technologies into your design process, if at all? Are there any specific AI tools or algorithms that you find particularly useful for enhancing your design work?
Our collaboration with AI is a dialogue. While humans remain the starting point of the creative process, AI provides feedback, which we as designers curate to find intriguing and fascinating details. It's maybe like the process in an artistic studio, involving arrangements, questioning, evaluations, and rearrangements. AI accelerates the visualization of potential possibilities, but ultimately, we as designers, as humans, decide the direction and when to stop. The act of design remains intrinsic, constantly fueled by external sources, be it sounds, textures, memories, or now AI, representing an evolutionary step in development.The MEM architecture for our long-term client Dornbracht, for example, is the first application where the potential of AI tools in the design process is showcased, establishing Dornbracht as a progressive partner in the architecture and design community. AI tools like Midjourney, Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT are now integral to our concept and design process, enabling us to generate unique and innovative mood boards, specially tailored to projects and clients.Regarding the MEM bathroom architecture, we already had a creative concept or vision before involving AI. We instructed the AI based on these parameters, and Midjourney served as a supporting tool to sketch and visualize early project ideas, allowing for the generation and acceptance of surprising and unfamiliar aesthetics, which I think is the true potential of AI tools for now.


Can you share your vision for the future of AI in design? What do you anticipate as the most exciting possibilities and challenges that AI will bring to the field in the coming years?
AI lightens our load, particularly in production, ultimately leading to time efficiency. But what remains is something fundamental to our humanity: the ability to dream individually and collectively, to envision what we can create. Therefore we should embrace innovation instead of fearing it. AI as a celebration of shared imagination. And, in the end, an open invitation to embark on the first step of collective development: dreaming. 

Isn't it wonderful? AI can assist us in envisioning better worlds. Let's hope we don't wake up in a nightmare. When I work with ChatGPT, I often find myself writing "please", emphasizing politeness – you never know when the universe will strike back.