The first print issue of the Face, which is back after a 15-year hiatus, will hit newstands on Friday. It will feature four big names from the world of music on its inaugural covers: flamenco-pop star Rosalia, US rapper Tyler, the Creator; former One Direction star Harry Styles and British-Albanian singer Dua Lipa.

Given the Face was originally a music mag “first and foremost”, according to the editor, Stuart Brumfitt, he wanted to relaunch with music covers. But it felt right not to have just one star. “We didn’t feel like right now there was necessarily one person who defined the moment for us. We just like the fact that pop music is having this incredible moment and there’s such a great range of characters.”

Brumfitt explains the choices: Styles might have come from X-Factor boy band One Direction but “he has gone in a really fascinating direction” – Stevie Nicks and Elton John voice their support for him in the magazine. Dua is “the biggest female pop star we’ve had in ages” and “she seems to be having a lot of fun with her celebrity”. Rosalia is an artist Brumfitt became instantly passionate about when he came across her this year. “She’s become this massive gay icon and she’s also tapping into reggaeton, which is traditionally a more macho [genre],” he says. While Tyler is popular enough to have had a No 1 album in the US and yet is “totally alternative”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harry Styles on the cover, shot by Collier Schorr. Photograph: Publicity Image

The magazine, known as a cultural touchstone and style bible throughout the 80s, is credited with helping to launch the career of Kate Moss, who appeared on the cover, shot by Corinne Day, in 1990, as well as those of the photographer Juergen Teller and the designer Alexander McQueen. It became, in the words of a former contributor, Alex Needham, a “global byword for cool, and a lifeline for readers dreaming of hanging out in the Wag club but stuck miles away in the sticks”.

Bringing back such a cultural titan, which at its peak sold 70,000 copies a month, is a big task, but Brumfitt is “just excited really, not daunted at all”. Having launched the website in April, the team have had, he says, “a good few months of finding out what kind of content we want to create and what kind of stories we wanted to tell, what kind of images we like”.

For Brumfitt, the thing he loved as a reader in the late 90s and early 00s was the mix of content. “It could do high/low, underground/popular … Any great magazine for me is somewhere you can go from something about an underground club night to something more serious and political to a great fashion shoot.”

True to that ideal, Brumfitt says we can expect “a slightly bonkers mix” in the relaunch. Issue one darts from an interview with the England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford to a feature about what fame does to the brain. There’s an interview with two of the actors who are part of the first black family on Coronation Street, a piece speaking to people who do LSD to have “more exciting, meaningful sex”, a 10-page guest edit from the TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham, a Q&A with Liam Gallagher and a guide to the tech-wear pagan revival in Somerset. Brumfitt thinks the varied content will work for young people used, via YouTube and Instagram, to hopping from one thing to another.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dua Lipa on the cover, shot by Juergen Teller. Photograph: Publicity Image

The magazine’s 24-year run came to a complicated end in 2004 and there have been questions raised about the wisdom of relaunching the magazine at all, but specifically about relaunching a print publication in a digital age. Brumfitt, however, has no qualms: “I just think a magazine like it needs to exist.”

A voracious reader of magazines until five or 10 years ago, Brumfitt doesn’t think he stopped reading them because he went off print. “I think it’s just that there weren’t the magazines filled with the kind of content I want to read.” A lot of fashion and style magazines have, he says, “become much more image-based, kind of portfolios of photographers and stylists, which is great if you’re specifically into that”. He wants to be sure to “put some emphasis back on stories and thinking and discussion, so you can read and learn but also see amazing images and fashion, the best photography and graphic design all in one place”.