[2] The visual design and identity of FILE Megazine was a deliberate appropriation of the defunct Life magazine.
[2] The magazine was also the mouthpiece of General Idea, and in this sense, was used as a way for the artist group to release a kind of propagandistic self-referential self-promotion.
The writing style of these editorials is noteworthy for its heavily ironic use of language, a parody of advertising copy, laced with double-entendres.
As the mail-art movement subsided, the focus of FILE Megazine broadened to include the wider arts, culture and entertainment world.
An article appeared in The Village Voice, which included a stern condemnation of the lawsuit by Robert Hughes, Time magazine's then art editor.