Jean-Claude Suares, a storied publishing designer who oversaw three redesigns of Travel Weekly, died on July 30 at the age of 71 from a bacterial infection.
A Sephardic Jew who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1942, Suares grew up in Italy and New York. He recalled discovering his passion for design in the mid-1960s during a brief tenure at the Stars and Stripes while stationed with the U.S. Army in Vietnam.
He first earned widespread notice and acclaim when he created a then-controversial but widely copied illustration concept for the New York Times op-ed page at its introduction in 1970.
After leaving the Times in 1973, his career included stints as the design director of New York Magazine and Connoisseur and as creative director of a European edition of Vogue in Paris.
But he was perhaps best known for overseeing sweeping redesigns of publications that, in addition to Travel Weekly, included Variety, Publishers Weekly, Broadcasting & Cable and Military History magazine.
A pioneer in the development of the coffee-table book genre, he set off a cat-book craze in 1976 with the release of “The Illustrated Cat: A Poster Book,” which he co-wrote and designed.
He quickly followed that with four more cat books, all of which were best sellers. Suarez later worked with Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis at Doubleday, where, among other successes, he designed Michael Jackson’s autobiography, “Moonwalk.”
Suares, who was known to colleagues and friends alike as J-C, was first hired to do a redesign of Travel Weekly in 1998. That was followed by two more redesigns of the print version of the newspaper in 2002 and 2005.
“Whenever J-C did a redesign, it was a major statement, and triggered a reaction from readers,” recalled Travel Weekly Editor in Chief Arnie Weissmann. “He once designed an entire technology supplement in a horizontal format, just to shake things up.
“Work with him was often fun and always intense,” Weissmann continued. “He’d start sketching as we spoke, and seeing those sketches evolve and become refined during the process, and then come to life on our pages, was always magical. He had a terrific talent, and will be missed.”
At the time of his death, Suares was an independent design consultant under contract to several publishing companies in New York and Wisconsin.