{"id":9579,"date":"2026-03-27T17:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9579"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:57:07","slug":"inside-the-creative-collaboration-that-turned-jfk-jr-s-political-magazine-into-a-sexed-up-cultural-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9579","title":{"rendered":"Inside the creative collaboration that turned JFK Jr.’s political magazine into a sexed-up cultural moment"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It was 1997, and Matt Berman, the creative director of JFK Jr.\u2019s George<\/em> magazine, had just gotten back to his hotel in Los Angeles. He had left the \u2018Garden of Eden\u2019 style set he\u2019d concocted for the cover of the September issue: lush with greenery and replete with live animals. It would reach peak ripeness once the star, Pam Anderson, arrived on set the next day as the \u201cfirst woman,\u201d to illustrate a feature on the 20 most fascinating women in politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But there was a problem. A note was waiting for him at the front desk of the hotel. It was from Anderson. She was canceling. \u201cShe was like, \u2018I can\u2019t, a million apologies,\u2019\u201d recalls Berman. \u201cSomething like that. It was just crazy.\u201d Amazingly, he secured Kate Moss that night through her former boyfriend Mario Sorrenti, who\u2019d arrived to photograph the shoot. You wouldn\u2019t guess from the talent, set design, and tabloid-like plot twists that this was for a political magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that was the creative\u2014and challenging\u2014conceit of George<\/em>: to dust off politics and give it broad, glossy appeal. \u201cHe wanted a magazine that would seduce people, and that comes from the fashion world, the music world; different, other kinds of magazines in the world I came from at Elle<\/em>,\u201d says Berman of his former friend and boss, who died in 1999 at age 38.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the issue, Kennedy Jr. posed as Adam in his illustriously candid, bantering editor\u2019s letter<\/a> (no image, sorry). And he suggested he was clued into the criticism: \u201cI\u2019ve heard about substance abuse, and I\u2019m staying away from substance,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo whom much is given, much is expected, right?\u201d An apple dangled overhead. The insider and Berman, a young artistic director outsider, encouraged readers to take a bite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[Image: Matt Berman]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HOW IT STARTED\u00a0<\/h2>\n

George<\/em> launched in September 1995 after Kennedy Jr. secured a publishing deal with Hachette. Berman, who was in his late 20s at the time, had been working at another Hachette publication, Elle<\/em>, where he collaborated with its iconic founding editor R\u00e9gis Pagniez. \u201cThey introduced me to John as the guy who\u2019s going to get him up and running, and I\u2019m going to do his logo and his prototype, and they\u2019re going to go out and sell the magazine,\u201d says Berman. \u201cI was installed in a conference room with John and his business partner and his assistant. And we all became just really good friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kennedy ultimately had Berman stay on in a permanent role, and they became close creative collaborators in developing the magazine\u2019s overall visual look. George<\/em> was highly art directed and visually-forward as a way to trojan horse politics as a curated, sometimes campy fashion pub. Berman designed the logo (Univers, Kennedy picked it for the \u201cGe\u201d ligature), the covers and their concepts and helped select talent, and everything on the pages in between.<\/p>\n

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[Image: Matt Berman]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe general idea is to present politics, which can be kind of boring and dusty in a new way and a new lens, to capture people\u2019s attention and imagination,\u201d Berman says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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It was 1997, and Matt Berman, the creative director of JFK Jr.\u2019s George magazine, had just gotten back to his hotel in Los Angeles. He had left the \u2018Garden of Eden\u2019 style set he\u2019d concocted for the cover of the September issue: lush with greenery and replete with live animals. It would reach peak ripeness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brand-spotlights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}