Paul Pensom "You have to love what you do"

Paul Pensom works as an art director for Creative Review, a magazine I have been subscribed to for about 2 years now. He has worked for other magazines in his past, such as Fact magazine.
He visited our university today to talk about his work. It was very relevant to art direction, in particular layout and type.
He believes that magazines are like an on-going conversation, compared to more transient forms of design. He argues that success as a designer relies on really knowing the 'story' of your work. So when it comes to magazine design, you must really read the articles and know what story the magazine is saying. In reference to advertising, it means really knowing your product before you try to sell it.
Pensom seemed to have a great interest in the power of magazines as a challenging and forthright media, a power he wishes to reignite one day, to move away from high fashion magazines and back into the era of magazines such as The Face. His passion for magazines shows through in his work, and he says 'You have to love what you do... our work is also our vocation'.
His most recent design work was the redesign of Creative Review which was published April 2010. His idea for the redesign was to make the magazine a peer, rather than a boss. So it is something accessible to not just regular readers, but to people who haven't seen CR before, thereby widening their audience. This practice could also be applied to advertising design, showing the product in a new light as to draw the attention of more people.