Editing Creative Culture with System Magazine’s Jonathan Wingfield

• From suburban boredom to fashion curiosity - Wingfield traces his creative awakening to the disconnect between small-town life and the cultural energy of nearby London—music, record sleeves, and magazines were his early portals.
  
  
• The record sleeve as first editorial influence - A Peter Saville–designed cover for New Order’s True Faith becomes an entry point into the world of typography, photography, and image-making.
  
  
• A formative mentorship on the road - A months-long carpool with UK publishing legend Alan Lewis becomes a crash course in magazine craft—headline writing, storytelling, and editorial voice.
  
  
• Why editing is about the final decisions - For Wingfield, the joy of putting a magazine together isn’t in the interviews—it’s in the final details: captions, pull quotes, and headlines that shape meaning.
  
  
• System’s founding as a response to access fatigue - Frustrated by increasingly hollow interviews with celebrities, Wingfield wanted a space for deeper, more sustained conversations—System was his answer.
  
  
• Virgil Abloh as a cultural inflection point - A cover story featuring Virgil becomes a turning point for System, bridging industry credibility and outsider influence, and reframing who the magazine is for.
  
  
• The slow reveal: System’s relationship to time - Wingfield shares why the magazine resists real-time commentary and favors longer arcs—interviewing designers after the noise has died down.
  
  
• The launch of System Collections

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  He introduces System’s newest project: a seasonal, time-capsule-style publication that offers deep visual and editorial takes on fashion month.
  
  
• On interviewing well—and waiting for silence - One of his top tips: don’t rush to fill silences. Real answers often follow the pause.
  
  
• What’s contemporary now? Swerve the algorithm - Wingfield’s closing reflection: avoid being trapped in feedback loops. Discovery, intuition, and counterintuitive creativity are what truly move culture forward.

Notable Quotes: 

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• “I didn’t know what typography was, but I knew I couldn’t stop staring at that record sleeve.”
  
  
• “Editing, for me, is about those final choices—pull quotes, titles, captions. That’s where meaning takes shape.”
  
  
• “I was a kid blown away by a 30-minute train to London. The idea of interviewing Nirvana on a tour bus? I was all in.”
  
  
• “System started because I got tired of interviews where you had 10 minutes and a room full of publicists. You learn nothing in that setup.”
  
  
• “The best interviews happen when you let the silence do its job. That’s when people say the things that matter.”
  
  
• “We didn’t want System to dictate trends—we wanted it to reflect what was already happening inside the culture.”
  
  
• “The most interesting commentary on a film often came from the costume designer, not the star. That logic applies to fashion too.”
  
  
• “With System Collections, we’re not reacting in real time. We’re offering something more considered, more reflective. Something that—hopefully—is worth collecting.”
  
  
• “At a certain point, we’d interviewed all the kings and queens. It was time to ask who was building the next court.”
  
  
• “What’s contemporary now? Swerve the algorithm. Get outside your echo chamber. That’s where discovery happens.”