UNIT 51 and History of Magazines

This Unit is called Page Layout and Design and it is mainly based around creating an d putting together a Magazine cover

L/O

1) To be able to edit and process text to meet the brief

2) To be able to source images to meet the brief
3)To be able to prepare images to meet the brief
4)To be able to design & produce a page layout to meet the brief.

Types of Magazines

1) Consumer Magazines 

2) Business/ Professional/ Trade Magazines

3) Newspaper Supplements

4) Partworks

5) Academic Journal

History of  Magazines (according to magazinedesigning.com)

The First Magazine ever created was in 1663, it was a german magazine called Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, this was aimed at Intellectual people.

Magazine comes from the Arabic word "Warehouse" which is place that is described as containing various  goods which is also technically what a magazine is.

19th Century

• Magazines were available to Middle Class as well of Upper Class as of the Mid 19th Centaury.
• This was also the start for many family magazines such as Dickens Household Words.
• Attempts were also made at this point to cut the price of magazines, however ads were loaded with special tax, until about up to 1853.
• Technological involvement started and therefore there was an increase in circulation and a further use of images,
• this made the magazines look more attractive and advertisers started to notice this. The first advertising Agency started in 1890.
• Good Housekeeping, National Geographic and Harper's Bazaar were all introduced during this time period by William Randolph Hearst
• Vogue, Vanity Fair and Time (news Magazine) was also started by Henry Luce, who is by today standards, considered one of the most influential publisher in history.
• Cosmopolitan started in 1886, as a house magazine.

Luce and Hadden

• Luce actually stole the magazine idea for Time from a colleague at Yale, Britton Hadden
• Hadden was the editor of Time Magazine and actually introduced the concept of a political news magazine. He was editor of the Magazine and well respected at this point. He started the same company that issue very well - known magazines such as Life, Sports Illustrated and Money, later in the centaury.

Hadden changed the way that people look at magazines in the 20th Centaury, However he died at the age of 30 due to the flu. Henry Luce continued his Legacy as developing Time Magazine for the next few decades.

Fortune Magazine and Colour

• Fortune Magazine was published in 1929 which was an spinoff from Time. It was based very much around the world of business and was considered the best magazine in that sector. It is known for being the very first high quality print magazine, with colourful and bright pages especially that the irony was that it was a business magazine.
• Fortune is also credited with inventing Photo - Journalism which proved to make Life magazine famous in years to come. This was expensive to print and ultimately starts to lose money.
• in 1948, Fortune becomes an ordinary business magazine.

Women and Magazines

• Post WW2, in 1945, Helene Gordon Lazareffe and her husband Pierre launched Elle Magazine (French for 'she') which gave women a voice and changed the way that they were viewed, how they think and how they speak.
• Elle instructed women to be nice and attractive
• The magazine was extremely successful
• Helene promoted the then unknown designer Dior's fashion and put the then unknown designer Brigitte Bardot on the front cover in 1950.
• She employed François Giroud, who was a feminist that ran a weekly political magazine L'Express
• in 1958, Despite unpopularity in France, Helene promoted and advocated for the return of Coco Chanel.
• Elle predicted a vision of the future in white clothing in 1965.
• It was a week to week magazine meaning every week a new edition was released
• Reached one million sales in 1960 at this point 1 in every 6 French women read Elle weekly
• Elle left the magazine 1972, when it was at it's peak number of sales
• When She died of Alzheimer's in 1988, Elle dropped down to 370,000 Copies

Golden Era and Mad Man

• Magazines were popular in 1950's in New York.
• Madison Avenue was location of the largest magazines in that decade
• Creative Revolution started in Manhattan. This is when the new generation of designers and art direction which we still use in 2016 started here. As well as an established design and magazine advertising.
• Magazine Giants worked in progress in Manhattan such as Alexey Brodovitch for Harper's Bazaar, Leo Lionni for Fortune, Henry Wolf for Esquire and even Art Paul for Playboy.
• Because this was before modern technology, everything was done by hand and therefore it was very difficult and time consuming.
• Took about 4 months to produce a single issue at this point.
• Esquire Magazine was a huge hit in this era, It transformed the magazine from men using specific art direction from Henry Wolfe. it increased sales majorly from 1933 to the end of the 1960's

Further Progress of Magazines

• Twen was released in Germany in the 1970's. it was a magazine aimed at younger audiences with erotic images and Intelligent articles. the main purpose of Twen was to sway the mind of the youth at that time differently than the previous generation. They succeeded.
• Celebrity magazine also emerged in the 70's. People magazine was first published in 1974. This has been the best selling magazine type ever since. 
• Cosmopolitan gained popularity as it was readjusted so that Women were it's target market in the 60's this made it extremely Popular.
• Fashion magazines also boosted around the 80's. This Includes Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
• Vanity Fair was reissued in the 1980's.
• British Magazines are were the most popular and successful nationality on the Shelves in the 90's such as Face and Arena, got shutdown in 2000's.
• Specialized Magazines also grew in the Nineties such as Wired, which to this day is the best niche magazine. This looks at the growing world of technology and cyber information

Overall, We can understand that Magazines to this day are still fairly popular despite the decrease in numbers and although numbers may still go down. They will Never Die Out. New Technology such as the Ipad and Photoshop give us hope for the future that there will be a crossover between those and magazine production. 

However, as the days go by, People are letting the feel of the page slip through their fingers and swiping and pressing buttons to look at articles. Some people need the feel of the paper pages for sure 

Magazines have helped many people lives with it's wisdom in make up and fashion as well as what to eat, what to think and how the world is changing around us in so many aspects.

I personally see no reasons why magazines should stop producing but who know's what the future holds for them?

Thank You for Reading.