The Photography and Design of our newspaper

"Impact versus beauty"
"Most designers will probably wish to produce a magazine that is a beautiful aesthetic object - but beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder and a subjective value that does not always work best towards particular designs. As Morrish (2003) observes, for many titles beauty is a far too static ideal and what a good designer works is impact.
This can be very evident in some of the best-selling titles in the UK, European and American markets, some of which look garish by any standards. Notions such as harmonising or selecting subtle images and logos appear to have been discarded, to be replaced by bright, neon lettering on brash, day-glo colours. And yet the designs of these magazines work - battling it out on the front line of the newsstand to attract notoriously promiscuous readers who flit from title to title each week.
Of course, when chasing mass market, the design techniques for such titles have to be loud and rather kitsch. But titles that do not seek such wide circulation will obviously wish to announce very different values in terms of design. Using more restrained colours and balanced designs, titles such as Vogue and Wallpaper* wish to indicate to both advertisers and readers that they are much classier than the tabloids. One publisher I knew would regularly read Cigar Afficionado: he did not smoke, and thus had little interest in cigars themselves, but the lush advertising and understated articles on the finer things of life appealed to the rich life-style he wished to lead ( or, equally importantly, wished others to believe he led).
'Magazine Production'
'Jason Whittaker'