Magazine Design
For my idea I’m going to do an article on the community in Hastings, specifically the music/art scene as it has a very lively one that most people wouldn’t consider thinking about when thinking about Hastings.
When looking for magazines to do with music the majority of them are for rock and metal genre of music, which isn’t the style that I will be looking at while in Hastings; so, I picked up Wire magazine which is a Independent, monthly music magazine which covers a range of alternative and non-mainstream music.
Looking at the design of it I quickly realised that there is a lot of text to each page, especially with the review pages where it’s just reams of text in columns over 35 pages. It was mind-numbing to look at unless you are super into the music that they are talking about or an artist that is being reviewed; even then having so much text and no images isn’t nice to look at in anyway.
Even the feature article on musician Joe McPhee is made up of full bleed images next to full text pages of his interview with the magazine.
For me personally and for my idea that style of design seems very formal and heavy to read, almost like a business journal.
So I visited the University library to see what kind of music magazine they may have for reference and found paper magazine; paper magazine is an independent magazine that focuses on pop culture, fashion, nightlife, music, art and film.
While this is still not massively suited for my article as the music I’ll be looking at is folk, the design of the pages and the layout of the magazine in general is more of what I wanted for the unit.
While this is still not massively suited for my article as the music I’ll be looking at is folk, the design of the pages and the layout of the magazine in general is more of what I wanted for the unit.
There are a lot more pictures, which are placed better rather than just full bleed like in wire magazine.
For example, their feature article is on Pee-Wee Herman who is a fictional character portrayed by Paul Reubens; the design of the main pages of the article is four images of Pee-Wee doing different poses under a disco ball with the text of the article carrying on, on top and underneath each image in columns. Along with the bright red light that he is standing in front of it is very eye catching and just generally more pleasing to look at.
