Magazine - Brief

In response to the written piece, it concluded that over the years there have been some obvious gender focused design styles within editorial and although the issue of the gender inequality within the design industry has been raised as an issue and influencing in terms of communicating the issue has occurred, but it still isn’t necessarily the most effective way to narrow the gap. I came to the conclusion that although editorial design had influenced the gender gap in a positive way, the fact that women designers were still being pointed out to be a woman shows that the gender is still more of a focus than the actual design work. So in reaction to the comment by Sophie Thomas, ‘don’t design for women or men - design for people’ I decided that a magazine that responds to the content within rather than following a uniformed design system would appropriately remove any associations to the particular design styles in regards to gender. Another consideration I will need to make is the effectiveness of keeping the identity of the designers anonymous until the end. It would be interesting to explore the different ways in which I can do this, allowing for the focus to be solely on the design work so that any prejudgements can be avoided. 

Another quote driving the design project is ‘my hope is that we won’t need special editions for female designers of today’s generation in tomorrow’s press.’ This points out once again that although editorial design is addressing that there is a gender inequality issue, it is still not treating women as an equal to the male designers which as a result is not working to remove the issue, only raise awareness about it. 

The brief suggests that the magazine should be designed to be about pieces of design work that are addressing issues within society and topics of discussion. This will drive the name, design, colour scheme etc. of the magazine. 

Initial brief

Final brief