AnOther Magazine Critical Journal
Chapter 1 A Historical Perspective:
Fig. 1 The Review, 1708
Fashion magazines have been around since the Elizabethan age, but it wasn’t until 1732 that the word ‘magazine’ was introduced by bookseller Edward Cave, “In the dictionary writer Samuel Johnson credits Cave with having given birth to the word” (Chisholm, 2012, p. 51). Magazines were introduced in the early eighteenth century in Western Europe. Instead of being solely based around news, Vaughn (2007) highlighted “magazines allowed male writers and editors to discuss their opinion on a wide variety of subjects, including fashion, lifestyle and politics”. The first English magazine which lasted from 1704 to 1713 is “thought to be ‘The Review’ introduced by Daniel Defoe” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 4). Defoe played a significant role in the birth of the modern press; the purpose of his weekly periodical was to discuss international and domestic politics. Other early publications included The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711-14) introduced by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (Whittaker, 2008, p. 4). Edward Cave was founder of The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731 which lasted until 1907, making it the “most successful magazine ever issued” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 6). Europe in the eighteenth century provided a period of time that was intellectual, social and political. Whittaker (2008) also stated there was “a new wealth in London brought on by the Capitalist empire” this allowed Cave to provide the males who recently acquired this wealth with unmissable information on the significance of their role within society.
Fig. 2 The Gentlemens Magazine, 1775
Traditionally there are three different markets within which magazines can be published: consumer; business-to-business, and contract. Consumer magazines typically have a wide readership and wide viewpoint and are targeted to the general audience. “The best-selling magazines are general men’s and women’s titles, television guides, leisure and domestic magazines” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 14). Those which give readers “information, advice and entertainment relating to the time they are not at work” (McKay, 2004, p. 26). An example is GQ magazine founded in New York in 1931 which mainly focuses on men’s fashion, style and culture. “B2B magazines largely consist of controlled circulation titles that are distributed directly to individuals and companies working in particular industries” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 18). These magazines offer news and information that target specialised areas of trade, including Q&A interviews, product listings and feature articles. An example is Business of Fashion founded in 2007 offering a daily resource for fashion entrepreneurs, creatives and executives. According more
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magazines in the UK are titles produced for companies”, examples include Sky, the National trust and main supermarkets such as Asda and Tesco. The most prominent periodical of the eighteenth century was Harper’s Bazaar, introduced in 1867. By 1880 the women’s publishing industry was rapidly growing with popularised magazines such as Good Housekeeping introduced in 1885, which focused on women’s interests and product testing, and Vogue a weekly fashion magazine introduced in 1892. At this time women faced challenges within the patriarchal society with men holding all the privilege and power, while the female’s job was to satisfy the man’s wishes.
Fig. 3 Harpers Bazar periodical, 1869
Fig. 4 Cosmopolitan Magazine, 1896
Fig. 5 Vogue Magzine, 1892
It wasn’t until Cosmopolitan Magazine, first published as a family magazine in 1886, became a women’s magazine in the early 1960s, which reflected on the feminist movement and women’s rights in that time period. Cosmopolitan is now regarded as one of Hearst publications most successful magazines, because it “became the number-one-selling monthly magazine, while serving as an agent for social change, encouraging women to go after what they want” (Benjamin, 2007, n.p). In 1909 Condé Nast acquired Vogue and in 1911, Hearst bought Good Housekeeping. Both magazines were very popular and achieved high circulation which created a shift towards the female publishing market. Technology has been widely developed since the beginning of magazines in the early eighteenth century. The access to this technology led to a rise in fashion magazines. While there were still “difficulties and costs of printing and distributing a magazine, as opposed to simply preparing copy and layouts” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 14) the development of computers and desktop publishing allowed publishers to advance swiftly into the 20th century.
Chapter 2 Reflective Learning:
Reflective learning is defined as “a process which involves dialogue with others for improvement or transformation whilst recognizing the emotional, social and political context of the learner,” (Brockbank et al, 2017, p. 3). Throughout my project I have used reflective learning to implement changes and improvements on the work I produced. Deep research into the editorial market and specifically AnOther Magazine helped me to create a re-branding concept for the existing title. Using online resources such as Pinterest and editorial content in addition to physical copies of magazines were a significant part of my research. By remaining open to different ideas and approaches to something more unique and creative, I was able to take action on any improvements I believed Another Magazine needed. For this project focused on women’s consumer magazines, which are “the most successful category of consumer magazines, while they do not take up many of the top ten positions in terms of circulation, they do dominate the lists of sold titles” (Whittaker, 2008, p. 15). When considering the history of magazines and understanding that there was a stronger focus surrounding male magazines including editors and writers working for those publications, it is significant that women’s magazines stay so successful to honour and continue the strength of feminism. Therefore, I wanted to improve upon the bi-annual, fashion publication AnOther Magazine. I wanted the articles to include refreshing and influential topics, giving deeper insight into the raw details of certain people’s lives. Reading content that is relatable and thought-provoking, can be highly beneficial for people in their everyday lives. It engages the target audience and new consumers while differentiating from the hundreds of other competing consumer magazines.
When I wrote the first draft of the McQueen article, I read it back and realised it didn’t flow very well, so I changed around the paragraphs multiple times to ensure the wording and the focal point of the article was clear and concise for the audience to easily understand. Significantly, when writing the article on oversized fashion, I lost focus on what I wanted to get across to the readers and had to choose between a focus on racial bias or the endurance of oversized clothing. With difficulty of trying not to go into a lot of detail when incorporating the issue of race, I managed to get the significant factors across whilst maintaining a focus on the initial oversized clothing angle. I believe both articles follow the original brand identity of AnOther magazine but highlight more stimulating information that is relatable to as a society. When laying out the magazine on InDesign, it took time and research to find the right fonts, graphics and imagery suitable for the publication. I looked at the book fundamentals of typography for design and layout ideas as well as physical copies of AnOther Magazine, from which I found that the fonts typically used made the articles harder to read as they were quite crowded on the page, so as part of the re-branding I wanted to use fonts that were easier for the reader to follow. Their usual fonts change throughout the magazine but tend to include ‘AnoSerif’, ‘Asperity’ and ‘Asphalt’. I used the fonts ‘Avenir next condensed’, ‘Source Serif’ and ‘DIN Alternate’. As illustrated in Figure 6 and 7, I believe these worked well as it still represented their original aesthetic but was easier for the reader to follow. For the images I first used ones I had found on Pinterest and Google, but the image quality was not high enough for successful printing, so I used the website Unsplash to get high resolution, copyright free images. Fig. 6 Fig. 7
Lastly, I wanted to incorporate graphics into the magazine, so I illustrated around certain images to creatively match the colour scheme of the article (see figure 8 below). While this was only in small sections of the article, the illustration adheres to the magazines original, minimal but effective house style. Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Chapter 3 Editorial and Marketing:
AnOther magazine is a niche, independent fashion magazine merging high fashion with arts, politics, world-class photography and literature. Upon research I discovered the publication hasn’t hosted any events since their 2015 launch party (AnOther, 2015). Subsequently I decided the best way to market its brand and engage consumers was to re-brand the existing magazine and showcase it at a launch party event. In addition to this, using it’s social media platform Instagram would be a successful way to build up to the event with a series of planned posts and stories.
Fig. 10 AnOther Magazine Instagram, 2020
According to Statista “42% of the world’s population uses social media, that’s 3 billion users worldwide” (2019, n.p). Social media marketing is “a strategic effort to continually deepen the relationship between a business and its audience” (Funk, 2012, p. 18). With 1.2 million followers on Instagram (Instagram, 2020) posting on the platform will reach and connect a high number of users worldwide. Visual content will create conversation between users which will lead to increased engagement with the magazines target audience. Using Instagram will allow AnOther Magazine to view the impressions and engagements made by followers and other users on their posts which will aid in tracking the success of the marketing strategy.
Fig. 11 AnOther Magazine Instagram, 2020
Bibliography:
(Critical Journal and Magazine layout references) Ambrose, G. and Harris, P. (2006). The Fundamentals Of Typography. Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA. Ambrose, G. and Harris, P. (2008). The Production Manual. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Ambrose, G and Leonard, N. (2012) Basic Graphic Design 03: Idea generation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Another Magazine (2020) [Online] Available from: <https://www.anothermag.com> [Accessed 2 May 2020]. Benjamin, J. (2007) How Cosmo Changed the World [Online] Cosmopolitan. Available from: <https://www. cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a1746/about-us-how-cosmo-changed-the-world/> [Accessed 2 May 2020]. Beethem, M. and Boardman, K. (2001) Victorian Womens Magazines: An Anthology. New York: Palgrave. Brockbanks, A. McGill, I. and Beech, N. (2017) Reflective Learning in Practice. London: Routledge. p. 3. Chisholm, K. (2012) Wits & Wives. London: Pimlico, p. 51. Clement, J. (2019) Social Media Marketing. United States: Statista. Available from: <https://www.statista.com/ topics/2057/brands-on-social-media/> [Accessed 9 May 2020]. Coles, S. (2011) AnOther and AnOther Man Magazines. [Online] Available from: <https://fontsinuse.com/ uses/44/another-and-another-man-magazines> [Accessed 28 April 2020]. Feather, J. (2006) Literacy, Print and Culture in early modern England. New York: Routledge. Funk, T. (2012) Advanced Social Media Marketing: How to Lead, Launch and Manage a Successful Social Media Program. New York: Apress. McKay, J. (2004) The Magazines Handbook. London: Taylor and Francis Ltd. Vaughn, S. (2007) Encyclopedia of American Journalism. New York: Routledge, pp. 283-284. Whittaker, J. (2008) Magazine Production. London: Routledge, pp. 3-24.
Image References: (Critical Journal)
Figure 1: (1708) Daniel Defoe Periodical [Online Image]. Available from: <http://www.rarenewspapers.com/ view/606905?imagelist=1< [Accessed 5 May 2020]. Figure 2: (1775) The Gentlemens Magazine [Online Image]. Available from: <http://www.rarenewspapers.com/ view/606905?imagelist=1> [Accessed 5 May 2020]. Figure 3: (1869) Harpers Bazar [Online Image]. Available from: <https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/ HARPERS-BAZAR-BAZAAR-REPOSITORY-FASHION-PLEASURE/9039519377/bd> [Accessed 5 May 2020]. Figure 4: (1896) Cosmopolitan Magazine [Online Image]. Available from: <https://thesocietypages.org/ socimages/2010/04/26/guest-post-the-evolution-of-cosmopolitan-magazine/> [Accesed 5 May 2020]. Figure 5: (1892) Vogue Magazine [Online Image]. Available from: <https://www.vogue.com/article/vogue-125-18922017-compare-and-contrast-now-and-then> [Accessed 5 May 2020]. Figure 10: AnOther Magazine Instagram (2020) [Online Image]. Available from: <https://www.instagram.com/ anothermagazine/> [Accessed 10 May 2020]. Figure 11: AnOther Magazine Instagram (2020) [Online Image]. Available from: <https://www.instagram.com/ anothermagazine/> [Acesed 10 May 2020].
(Magazine Layout)
Page 1: Emily Crockford Insstagram (2020) [Online Image] Available from: <https://www.instagram.com/ emilycrockfordphotography/tagged/?hl=en> [Accesssed 19 May 2020] Page 2: Natalia Alaverdian (2020) [Online Image] Available from: <https://awake-mode.com> [Accessed 2 May 2020]. Page 5: Cory Haywood (2018) [Online Image] Available from: <https://eurweb.com/2018/02/23/dont-blamemillennials-for-the-fall-of-hip-hop-it-started-with-the-bling-bling-90s-generation/> [Accessed 2 May 2020]. Page 7: Anne Deniau (2006) 13 years with Lee Alexander McQueen. [Online Image] Available from: <https://www. elle.com/fashion/news/a22133/lee-alexander-mcqueen-photography-book-love-looks-not-with-the-eyes-by-annedeniau/> [Accessed 2 May 2020] Page 9: Gary Wallis (1994) [Online Image] Available from: <https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/59bymx/gary-wallistakes-us-backstage-at-lee-mcqueens-controversial-early-shows> [Accesssed 2 May 2020] Page 11: Gary Wallis (1994) [Online Image] Available from: <https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/59bymx/gary-wallistakes-us-backstage-at-lee-mcqueens-controversial-early-shows> [Accesssed 2 May 2020] Page 14: Emily Crockford (2020 Available from: <https://emilyjanecrockford.wixsite.com/mysite/america> [Accesssed 19 May 2020] Page 15: Emily Crockford (2020) Available from: < https://emilyjanecrockford.wixsite.com/mysite/america> [Accesssed 19 May 2020] Page 16: Emily Crockford (2019) Available from: <https://emilyjanecrockford.wixsite.com/mysite/america> [Accesssed 19 May 2020] Page 17: Emily Crockford (2019) Available from: <https://emilyjanecrockford.wixsite.com/mysite/america> [Accesssed 19 May 2020]