Notes on the origins and functions of magazines

source: Young, X. and Foges, C. (1999). Magazine design. Crans-Près-Céligny: Rotovision.

What is a magazine?

• Cater for specific interests 
• Consumers belong to certain reader groups; sense of belonging 
• Serve as a collection; Arabic translation of ‘storehouse’
• Function of a collection of photographs and text, used as a coherent whole
• Brand loyalty; consumers belong to a group
• Serves as a storehouse; each reader can locate their personal interests; similar to how newspapers have categories

Origins

• Magazines and newspapers came into mass production not long after the printing press, and both initially served to provide quick information and regular entertainment 
• Magazines have branched out from their origins of ‘periodicals of amusement’ to catering for very niche, individual interests

Roles within editorial design

• Function; editors’ role is to oversee the context and cohesion of the publication; feeding into brand loyalty and the sense of the paper being personal to it’s reader 
• Function; art director. The magazine must have consistency and has to be comfortable for the reader to work as a whole

• Tight lead times mean that the team must work in alignment to avoid error 
• Quick turnaround times; a designer has limited time to work on spreads 
• Strict design rules/ structures of magazines may get tedious or repetitive for weekly/monthly editions

Developments in technology

• Shift from metal print to computerised magazines; no longer a large workforce 

• Weekly or monthly magazines employ fewer staff, with deadlines less frequent
• Function; magazines produced using desktop publishing; caused an evolution in the ease of creating a magazine; magazine production is now a geographically flexible business with improved technology 

• No longer requires specialist skills; links to fanzines created in physically smaller places 
• Links to zines as any individual with a specific interest can create a zine on their computer 
• The book argues that to create a successful magazine however, it still requires specialists for each component of the paper, e.g. journalists, advertising, photography; collaboration is key 

The impact of editorial design

• Magazines have always acted as a test ground where stylistic innovations are developed before they are adopted in the wider world; David Carsons’ Ray Gun
• Teal Riggs stated that magazines are ‘laboratories of experiment’ 
• Art directors and editors given freedom to create visual feats 
• Magazines are the place for the development of new design vocabularies
• The psychology of readers forming an emotional bond 
• Magazines are one of the few places where the average person gives thought to graphic design 

The modern reader and magazines

• Richard Hoggart’s study of mass communications ‘the uses of literacy’ suggests two things to the modern reader. 1) magazines have generally a short existence, unlike newspapers. 2) magazines serve as an archaic snapshot of the times that they were produced; e.g. ray gun captures postmodernism in graphic design. Nova and Twen; modernist?