As we go about our busy days as designers, there’s precious little time that can be spent on keeping up to speed with the latest developments of the creative industry. Whether looking for inspiration, insight, knowledge or references, finding the time of day to sit down and read a magazine is tough. But the fact is that magazines — and I’m using this term to describe high-level, professional, themed content, regardless of the publishing medium — carry a special cache which results in a far greater impact than what most of the newer media (read: blogs) can hope to approach.

There is great value in staying on top of a selection of creative blogs out there, and any designer worth their salt has an RSS reader bustling with the latest articles from these media. However, the content, the perspectives and the platform that a magazine provides contributes something which blogs, for all their good intentions, cannot hope to reproduce as of yet. Blogs are intended to be of-the-moment, and sites such as Smashing Magazine — to use the most ubiquitous example — have made a name for themselves by publishing highly current web design trends, techniques and inspiration.

However, for all of Smashing’s plusses, sites like it tend to focus largely on what other members of the exact same field are up to: not the ideal way to open up a creative’s mind. Creativity is best realized as the product of multiple sources of knowledge and inspiration, and mixing too sharp of a focus on one particular industry with a devout following of readers can only lead to a widespread culture of sameness — a development which has largely already happened. When these sites do provide round-ups of other fields of creativity, they tend to be fairly weak and lack the insight which comes as a result of a magazine’s professional, dedicated efforts.

Now, I’m not slagging blogs for the sake of it, as there are a tremendous number of high-quality ones out there. However, they offer only one piece of the inspirational puzzle, and any creative who has ambitions beyond maintaining the status quo owe it to themselves to broaden their horizons and push their own influences to take in work and insight from a variety of creative fields. A wider range of influences can only result in stronger creative work, as you never know where your next idea come from, whether it’s tomorrow or six months from now.

So, I’ve gathered together a list of a few magazines which, to my mind, act as a global compass for the best of the best. These are magazines which may focus on one particular creative niche or they may not, but the point is that the resources propelling these publications result in editorial content, scope and quality that is beyond compare.

Hand-in-hand with editorial quality is the experience of reading a magazine. Whether in print or digital format, it is an entirely different experience to reading a blog, one which engages the mind in a deeper way and makes a far greater impact on the reader’s mind.

Several months ago, Smashing posted a similar post listing several print magazines for designers to read, and while some of those magazines are good, a good number of them could go out of business tomorrow and nobody would be any worse off. But it’s my heartfelt opinion that, should the publications below go out of business, a void would be created in the global creative discourse that any website I’ve come across would be hard-pressed to fill.

Full disclosure: I work as the community coordinator and online editor at Applied Arts. However, I hold the magazines I’ve named below in the highest regard as essential measuring sticks of the creative industry. Whatever their editorial or geographical focus, these publications all deserve a spot at the collective media table.

Communication Arts

Long considered the North American champion of the creative industry, Communication Arts canvases the global creative industry with in-depth editorial and quality profiles, but most importantly through their awards. Regarded as one of the industry’s best competitions, if your name’s in the CA annuals, you know you’re on to something.

Creative Review

Focused more on editorial than awards (though that’s changing), Creative Review is based in the UK and focuses largely on the European creative industry, with dispatches from around the world. Also focused more on design-related issues than other fields, it provides a wealth of insight and knowledge, whether it’s profiles of the hottest studios, the latest books, conference reviews or intellectual opinion pieces. Bonus points for ongoing typographic coverage.

Eye

Not published as often as CR or CA, but perhaps the deepest of the lot, Eye magazine is an absolute treasure. Focused on graphic design, packed with deep, insightful articles, lovingly produced and stuffed with gorgeous imagery, Eye is the world’s journal on graphic design. A must.

Applied Arts

Focused on the Canadian creative community, the closest cousin would be Communication Arts. Most creative disciplines are covered within Canadian borders, with occasional explorations into international issues or other related creative fields such as industrial design.

PDN

The photography industry’s flag-bearer. I must admit that I haven’t read an issue in a long time so things may have changed, but it’s one of the pre-eminent places for photographic news and inspiration. There may be better alternatives to PDN, but I’ve not come across them yet.

IDN

Essentially a cousin of Eye’s, IDN is still a strong publication that covers the global design industry. The editorial coverage is superb, the layout is constantly trying new things (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much), and you’re pretty much guaranteed a wealth of new ideas by the time you put the issue down.

CREATIVITY and Graphis

These two were two of the best in their day, but have transformed in recent years. Creativity stopped publishing at the end of 2009 and moved entirely online on a subscription-based model, but they offer a quality overview of the creative industry, skewed more towards advertising than other fields.

Graphis, meanwhile, put out a magazine but were also amongst the best awards in the industry. The magazine is no longer printed, but their awards are still going and are published instead in a tome of a book, with different books for each competition. Looking at the back issues of Graphis is looking through the best of the creative business since the second world war.