Magazine - Front cover research

Front cover wire-framing

As part of my initial research on how to design the magazine with the editorial design decisions being the main focus as a response to the extended written exploration I have completed, I started by looking at the ways in which masculine, feminine and neutral layouts all compare. 

The initial idea was to design in a neutral design style, but as I started to plan out the content of the magazine it became apparent that this would only theoretically be appropriately but would not best represent the content of the magazine and therefore target the wrong audience for the magazine. It seemed that the best way to approach this editorial design would be to analyse the three different approach and take elements from each of the styles to generate something that is neither masculine, feminine or neutral; but a mixture of all three so that any gender associations could be removed. 

In advance of looking at the different aesthetics for the design approaches, I gathered a selection of editorial front covers that I could wireframe and then cross compare to see if there were any common design decisions happening. I could then look at the typefaces and ways in which the images have been placed and also how the overall magazine ethos has been portrayed. 

feminine

Feminine

The essay discusses the ways in which “feminist design looks for graphic strategies that will enable us to listen to people who have not been heard from before. […] Feminism is about bringing public, professional values closer together with private, domestic values, to break the boundaries of this binary system.” (Sheila Levrant de Bretteville: Dirty Design and Fuzzy Theory, interview with Ellen Lupton, Eye magazine, 1992.) In terms of editorial layouts, this can be seen through the reaction to design against the masculine design style of complete organisation and religiously sticking the grid systems that have been put into place through particularly the modernist period of design. The wireframes that shown the layouts of the magazine front covers to react slightly against the ways in which modernism may have previously directed designers to approach content placement. the titles are shown to be the largest focus on the page, often situated at the top of the page centrally. In terms of image to text ratios it seems that text is used a lot more on the feminine magazines in comparison to the masculine ones. The text is often very overlapped on top of the images and focuses on informing the audience on the content of the magazine in a more positive way than some of the more minimal approaches than the masculine and neutral editorial designs. The text is shown to really frame the image that has been chosen to use on the front cover, something that would be very appropriate for the design of my magazine. It would ensure that the title despite being a big focus in terms of portraying what the magazine is about, is also being used to direct the audiences attention to the visual content that is within the magazine - the visual content being more important that any preconceptions in regards to the designers gender, personality or design status. 

masculine

Masculine

A masculine design style is thought to be very uniformed and consistent, something that has been evidenced through the process of wire-framing these particular front covers. They all show the title placement to be left or right aligned, never central. This is interesting as the image is the central focus, in contrast to the feminine approach which relies on the text as the main design element to represent the content of the magazine. One element from the more masculine approach to design that could work well for the magazine I am designing would be the way in which the chosen image is the central focus of the page. This would be appropriate for the idea that my magazine will be content driven and the overall visual identity of the magazine will be minimally used as an influence throughout, allowing the designers style to come through with every section of the magazine. 

neutral

Neutral

The neutral layouts are a large mixture of the two, taking elements that I may have before research considered to be very masculine, but combining them with the more feminine approach of more text. The text and images work harmoniously and there is a lot of overlapping which is an interesting way to add depth to the front covers. The images often take a central placement to ensure that the style of the content within is represented appropriately. I think the idea of splitting the title up either into sections or as individual letters and placing them in a system on the page in different ares is an effective way to really engage the audience as they will have to undergo much more of a cognitive process when reading the title, allowing them to really consider the content within and understand that is not just design work, but design work with a purpose. 

The research has shown that in terms of neutrality, that is often best represented through the use of a particular typeface or colour scheme more so than the layout of the front covers. It has shown that there is a clear distinction between the more masculine and feminine design styles in terms of layout, all considerations that I will need to make when designing the front cover of my magazine so that it is no more associated to one than another. I will look at combining a mixture of both masculine and feminine layout decisions and then focus on bringing in the neutrality through the typeface choice and colour scheme used throughout the magazine in terms of the core content such as overall contents pages, text within and the coding of how the designers will be identified to the audience at the end. Progressing on from this research I will consider the fact that a well-designed cover is ‘something that perfectly and succinctly sums up the ethos of your magazine. Something that is bold and brave and doesn’t follow trends.’ 

As a starting point for the design of the front cover, I explored lots of current editorial pieces that I would see to be fairly neutral and generally visually engaging. I analysed the front cover designs and the different approaches I could apply to the design style of my magazine.  

In response to the research, I started to draw out some wireframes that take elements of each of the gender associations in terms of layout.