Shadowing Practice: 8 Designs That Inspired i-D Magazine's Editor in Chief | Source Material - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hi, I'm Tom Betridge and this... is my source material.
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Okay, so your producers were like, hey, are there any magazines we can get you?
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I was like, I'd really like the first issue of Joe's Magazine.
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Which was this magazine, Joe McKenna, who's one of the most legendary stylists in history made.
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And it was unbound, so this is just folded paper.
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And the cover's this amazing painting of a sort of renaissance woman smoking a cigarette, I guess.
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It's so fashion and it's so chic.
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This kind of text layout I think is incredible.
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You know, Marc Jacobs in conversation with Polly Mellon, Carleen Cerf.
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I don't know, I think Joe's is an amazing example of how a magazine can really be almost a way of thinking out loud.
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Colors Magazine was funded by United Colors of Benetton.
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Technically it was kind of like a corporate branding project.
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And it was created by Olivero Toscani, who is like a creative director who kind of for me
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is the ultimate blueprint of like image making in the modern age.
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And I thought Colors was a really incredible magazine because it almost sought to like document the world.
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This tension between an image and then when you put a text on top of it, you make it something totally different.
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And that's really like the core principle of magazine making.
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National Geographic went to art school and was on acid.
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This is a magazine, they were handing these out at this retrospective exhibition they did for Demna at the Blenciaga HQ right before he left there.
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It was such a perfect expression of his thesis.
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The magazine takes after the glossy People magazine kind of printing,
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and even the graphic design very much refers to that kind of mass market thing.
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But then inside of it you have like this really thoughtful exhibition catalogue.
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Actually kind of rigid and like very Swiss looking in a lot of ways.
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They had a stack of them there and I was just like...
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This is like...
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O3 2 C issue 33, 2017.
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Frank Ocean shot by my friend Petra Collins, styled by my friend Mel Ottenberg, who was the fashion director at the time.
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I just really love the cover story of this magazine, because it kind of encapsulates this sort of teenage wasteland feeling.
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Frank has become such a mythical figure since then.
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It's one of those things that I feel like really ages, interestingly, with time.
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I also wanted to do an unboxing.
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I was in Paris last week.
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My friends who make this magazine called All In were launching the new issue that they made, and they also have an incredible fashion brand called August Barron.
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And it was funny because when I was teaching at Central St. Martin's earlier this year, all the students, when I asked them what their favorite magazine was, they all said All In Magazine.
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It's such an obscure, kind of like niche publication.
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Something that really resonated with the students was this kind of like material quality to it.
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It comes in this box, there's like confetti in it.
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When you think about, you know, people's fatigue with the digital world, print is very much a way to kind of like counter that.
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I like to think about print in the most tactile terms possible.
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Obviously, they have a lot of freedom, being kind of like a boutique publication to do crazy printing techniques and stuff.
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It's so fun kind of parsing through this imagery
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and having to go through it in this funny way because it's not bound and stuff.
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It's just a really great expression of what I think the power of magazines is today.
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So this was the first issue of High Snobody magazine when I was the editor-in-chief there.
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And like, I was obsessed with this idea of of having a bunch of little Migos all over the cover.
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Kind of reminded me of Richard Scarry.
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There's this genre called Vimmel Builder, which are images that are really ornate and have lots of detail.
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Hieronymus Bosch or Where's Waldo are both Vimmel Builder.
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Magazines are usually about sexy face, close-up, and soft focus or whatever, but I like the idea of having Vimmel Builder of Migos on the cover.
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John and I really wanted to make a magazine that looks like a fashion magazine
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and like play off the tropes of 90s GQ.
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I actually have pages that have product recommendations.
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16 Sandals is like, I'm like, that still kills me.
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Or like, Damn Shorty for like our short shorts thing.
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This is my first issue as editor-in-chief of ID.
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We spent a lot of time in the archive, you know, in the early decades, 80s, 90s especially, they would just find cool people
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that they met going out or whatever and they would just put them on the cover, turn them into icons.
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I kind of wanted to do like the 2025 version of that.
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So we did a nationwide casting call with Jen Vendetti, who's a really amazing casting director.
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And Jen helped us find Enza, who was our unknown cover star.
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So she was a senior in high school in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.
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Was like the star actor at her school plays and aspiring model, LARPer.
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We went to visit her for three days, me and Aiden Zemiri, who shot the story.
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And we spent just like the first day just like hanging out
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and seeing her world and where she goes with her friends.
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On the shoot days, we shot her in her environment, in her room, in her living room.
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This picture was like at the drama club that she's in in school.
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So this was like a really special magazine for me
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because it was sort of like about this idea of like the reference system.
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I got really down a rabbit hole in like the ID history
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and like so much of the stuff in here is a reflection of that nerd out session.
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This is the second issue I did of ID.
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I was really into the idea of ID being a youth culture magazine, but I was like, what's more youth culture than a baby? baby.
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We had just discovered that 2025 was like the first year where like people born are gen beta.
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So we wanted to kind of have like the first like gen beta magazine cover.
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We did this photo shoot with this beautiful baby on the cover winking, which was really great.
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What we did was we actually, in lieu of a profile, we asked like a lot of important artists and politicians
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and figures in the world to give advice to someone born in 2025.
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It's funny because we actually design on Figma.
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You know, we kind of create sort of formulas and we kind of see how things fit in those formulas, but then we break the formulas.
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You know, because graphic design can be very systematic.
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I think something
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that was a real innovation for ID was it used graphic design in this very expressive way
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and this very DIY kind of way.
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Collaborative tools where you can just drag and drop stuff
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and multiple people can feast on it at once is like a really fun way to design a magazine
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and like not the way I came up designing magazines.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “8 Designs That Inspired i-D Magazine's Editor in Chief”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: magazine, cover, issue, design. This video has 88 sentences and 1236 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:50. The speaker talks fast, about 181 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| aspire verb | /əˈspaɪɚ/ | To have a strong desire or ambition to achieve something. |
| blueprint noun | /ˈbluːˌpɹɪnt/ | A type of paper-based reproduction process producing white-on-blue images by means of a photosensitive ferric compound, used primarily for technical and… |
| confetti noun | /kənˈfɛ.ti/ | Small pieces or strips (streamers) of colored paper or other material (metal, plaster, etc.) generally thrown about at festive occasions, especially at… |
| encapsulate verb | /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/ | To enclose something in, or as if in, a capsule. |
| expressive adjective | /ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/ | Effectively conveying thought or feeling. |
| glossy adjective | /ˈɡlɔsi/ | Having a smooth, silklike, reflective (shiny) surface. |
| mythical adjective | /ˈmɪθɪkəl/ | Existing in myth. |
| obsess verb | /əbˈsɛs/ | To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion. |
| ornate adjective | /ɔɹˈneɪt/ | Elaborately ornamented, often to excess. |
| resonate verb | /ˈɹɛz.əˌneɪt/ | To vibrate or sound, especially in response to another vibration. |
| retrospective adjective | /ˌɹɛt.ɹə(ʊ)ˈspɛk.tɪv/ | Of, relating to, or contemplating the past. |
| sandal noun | /ˈsændəl/ | A type of open shoe made up of straps or bands holding a sole to the foot |
| stylist noun | /ˈstaɪlɪst/ | A designer. |
| tactile adjective | /ˈtæktaɪl/ | Tangible; perceptible to the sense of touch. |
| unbound adjective | /ʌnˈbaʊnd/ | Not obligated. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| close up verb | /kləʊzˈʌp/ | To close (remove a gap) completely or fully. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| play off verb | To portray (something) (as unimportant); to dismiss or make light of (a factor in a situation, or one's embarrassment about it); to pretend not to be… | |
| think out verb | To devise or solve by a process of thought. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is just folded · was funded · was created |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | friends who make · Builder, which are · winking, which was |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 4 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I'd. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: mythical /ˈmɪθɪkəl/, thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/, thesis /ˈθisɪs/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: chic /ʃik/, nationwide /ˌneɪ.ʃənˈwaɪd/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, politician /ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/, reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: encapsulate /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/, retrospective /ˌɹɛt.ɹə(ʊ)ˈspɛk.tɪv/, collaborative /kəˈlæb.ə.ɹə.tɪv/, systematic /ˌsɪs.tɪˈmæt.ɪk/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like aspire, blueprint, confetti.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.