Magazine Design

Magazines have personalities. Like people, they can be edgy, colorful, organized, friendly, authoritative, or elegant. A magazine expresses its personality through its editorial slant—the kinds of stories it runs, the actual words these stories use—and also through its design—its use of typefaces, art, photos, colors, space, paper, and even its binding. Vanity Fair, with artful celebrity photos running across spreads, art deco cover type, and use of red borders, says it's sophisticated but willing to take risks. Esquire magazine's design says it's masculine and stylish. People magazine's design says it's friendly and newsy. Even magazines covering the same general subject—sports, for example—have differing personalities: ESPN, with its larger-than-typical size, bold type, and strong cover portraits, says it's a sports magazine with an attitude. Sports Illustrated, with its smaller format and mostly action-shot covers, says it's about news.

These distinctions are important because magazines want to occupy unique niches so as to appeal to readers, and design is a key way magazines distinguish themselves from each other. Even so, magazines in the early twenty-first century are designed using the same elements and many of the same techniques as they did in the 1930s. Modern magazine design—design that weaves type, art, and space—is a product of the twentieth century and advances in printing technologies. In the 1800s, magazine formats were smaller, and pages featured one- or two-column layouts with titles centered on the page and illustrations made from woodcuts—art engraved in wood and pressed onto paper. Twentieth-century printing made it easier and less expensive to reproduce color and black-and-white photos and illustrations. It also allowed two design movements that took shape in Europe to make their way to America: modernism and Dadaism.