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THIS MAGAZINE IS not like other magazines. A Died Tigers
Lion presents my Visual Communication Research Project about editorial design, and an analyse of two magazines; The Sunday Times Magazine and A-Magasinet.
Both magazines are published as supplements to big newspapers in their respective countries, and the content is much of the same in both magazines, only presented in different ways. These differences is what I will look more into in this magazine. I will present the outcome of my research in a visual way, by taking elements from their design and make new design out of it with help of different techniques. The name A Died Tigers Lion is an anagram of editorial design. If you organize the letters in right order, you will get editorial design, just like editorial design is about organazing different information. I hope whoever reads my magazine finds it interesting. - ENJOY!
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WHAT IS EDITORIAL DESIGN?
THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE VS AFTENPOSTEN A-MAGASINET
TYPOGRAPHIC CHOICES IN THE MAGAZINES
PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE MAGAZINES
INTERVIEW WITH ART DIRECTOR MATT CURTIS
SUMMARY
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It entertains, informs, instructs, communicates and educates through a mix of text and images.
We can say that editorial design is visual journalism.
The aim of editorial is to communicate an idea or story through the organization and presentation of visuals.
It gives an expression and personality to the content, helps attracting and retaining the readers, and it structures the material clearly.
A combination of all these three is important for the editorial function.
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There are different forms of editorial design. You have newspapers, magazines, catalogues, books etc. In this project the main focus will be on magazines and the different aspects that makes a good design. By looking in to a English magazine and a Norwegian magazine from the same category and compare these two, I want to find out what is essential in good editorial design.
THE FIRST MAGAZINE I will look into is The Sunday Times Magazine, published for the first time 4th February 1962. It was the first colour magazine to be published as a supplement to a newspaper in the UK. Several great editors, writers and photo graphers have contributed to the magazine throughout the decades. They have also published many special editions related to big happenings within politics, arts, science and sport. In 2014 the art director Matt Curtis redesigned the magazine. “By taking inspiration from the original designs for 50 years ago, he has given it a retro cool look with a modern, fresh take and it is one of the last magazines on fleet street that takes photojournalism seriously”, says The Sunday Times editorial director Eleanor Mills. The content of the magazine has a wide range of subjects, with culture, societal, sport, art etc. It contains big articles and interviews of high quality.
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AFTENPOSTEN IS THE biggest newspaper in Norway and was established in 1860. A-magasinet is a supplement that comes with the paper every Friday, and has over 700 000 readers every week. The first time it was published was in 1927, but it has been republished twice since, and 2005 was the last time. Eight years later, in 2003, the magazine was redesigned. “Teft” is the agency that got the job to design a new look for the magazine. The aim was as the editor in A-magasinet, Lillian Vambheim said: “A-magasinet will go from being a timeliness and reportage magazine, to become a contemporary magazine, with science, tendencies, research and culture”. They also wanted to appear more stylish and elegant than their competitors. The latest years they had lost their position on the market, and were selling lower numbers than the other magazines in the same category, therefor they
needed to strengthen their position, and it had to be done pretty quick, which was why they hired Teft to do the job for them. In April 2014, they won the most prestigious design award in Norway for design excellence in the category “visual communication”. It is being published at four different platforms; paper, web, mobile and tablet, and in this way it gets easily out to many people. Their target group is primarily 38 years and above. The magazine appears modern and classic at the same time, which shows through the design in the whole magazine. When the magazine was redesigned, they wanted to keep the essence of the old magazine, but give it a modern look that fits in the current time. It is clearly related to classic newspaper design, especially in some of the sections.
- KIM HUGO STRAND
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IF YOU LOOK at The Sunday Times Magazine´s front covers, they are always in a different style. The only thing that is consistant on each issue is that there is one big picture covering the whole page, which presents the main article. Their logo is not placed on the same place, the font used on the headline also varies from each issue, as well as the style on the picture. Compared to A-Magasinet, this magazine doesn´t look like a very serious magazine based on the front cover, but the content is much of the same.
THIS SHOWS SEVEN COVERS OF SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE LAID ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.
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ey e th th at in t th ed es s e e nt ak ime ill g e se se h n re s m y T w s t ca p hi a ou t u ys T nd y sen yo lwa le. Su et, re e, a ty e in ep in is t s h as r az le en o T ag ver o ag tic er t m ar iff ed -m c is in d ar f A he th a n a p r o d t of e m y i com ve an er th nl e co e, ov nd , o nis nt zin t c , a nt og fro aga on ut fo ec e fr o e r h m e lay sam to at t us th e io sy g at sam the ea kin ser ok e h ry o a lo th it e lo is u in , w e v en is ay. yo e ay in h th w If l ar e w gaz . W hat od al m a ne t go sa e m azi ling a th ag ee t in M e f en th ont c Each week the magazine contains six permanent themes; society, culture, science, food, nature and relation. Important for the magazine is to always have a focus on science, and that everything written in the magazine is supposed to be of high quality. Based on the six themes, they use a hexagon as a design element through the whole magazine, as some sort of characteristics for the magazine. The hexagon appears as picture frames, punctuation marks, to show different sections and in other graphic information.
THIS SHOWS SEVEN COVERS OF A-MAGASINET LAID ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.
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DIFFERENT TYPOGRAPHIC STYLES FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
TYPOGRAPHY
IN SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
THE CHOICE OF typeface is suitable for the content, with a serif-font as the primary font. This gives the magazine a serious expression. The font has many different styles, and is frequently used in headlines, subheads, body texts and captions. Based on where it is used, it appears in different styles, as bold, light, italic, lower case, uppercase, small caps and different point size. This helps giving a visual variation to the content, and helps the reader to navigate. It is a good font with ligatures, which makes it easy to read. In addition to the serif font, a sans-serif font is also used, and they suit each other well. This is used on smaller articles, text groups with informative content and headings. Using this fonts help to separate different categories in the magazine.
Despite of this I think it could have been a more consequent use of the different fonts and styles. There doesn´t seem to be any system on where the same fonts are being used, and as you can see to the left, the variations are big. Even when it is the same type of articles, there doesn´t seem to be any permanent use of style on the typography, and I think this makes the magazine a little messy and unstructured, especially compared to A-magasinet. Matt Curtis explanes this with that there is no strict rules on the typography which is the reason for having a range of fonts. He likes the typography to be expressive and relate to each article, and says that if they need an exciting or urgent feature we can use the large condensed font for the headlines. When it needs to be simple and straight forward they can use a sans. And when they need to be delicate and subtle they have the serif.
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DIFFERENT TYPOGRAPHIC STYLES FROM A-MAGASINET
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A-Magasinet´s choice of typeface is a big font family named Berlingske, a welldesigned font family of high quality. The font is in slab serif, serif and sans serif, and is used in numerous styles in the magazine. Their use of typo graphic hierarchy makes the magazine easy to read and navigate through. They use the same typography on the different text groups in all the articles. The headlines, subheads body texts, by lines, fact boxes, inputs etc. are always the same.
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PHOTOGRAPHY
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IN BOTH OF the magazines you can clearly see that the pictures is in high quality, and they both use professional photographers. Especially the Sunday Times Magazine has been known for having famous photographers to take their pictures, and they have also published collections from big happenings. The pictures helps setting life to the content, and suits the articles in a good way. It is important for the quality of the whole magazine, that the pictures help showing that they are serious with what they write about to their readers. All articles have own pictures taken especially for that specific article, and I think that is a sign on good quality.
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INTERVIEW WITH MATT CURTIS
The art director of “The Sunday Times Magazine”
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WHAT WAS THE AIM WHEN REDESIGNING THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE? We wanted to make the magazine more aware of itself as it had certainly lost its identity. I spoke with Sarah Baxter (The Editor) & Jon Jones (Director of photo足graphy) at length before I took the job, on what I wanted to do with the magazine. With a weekly mag, its about improving it every week and that is the real challenge.
DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER MAGAZINES THAT INSPIRE YOU IN YOUR DESIGN? New York Times magazine is pretty much the best in the business. Its also a weekly news magazine.
DO YOU HAVE ANY RULES FOR WHERE YOU USE THE DIFFERENT FONTS? No strict rules on the typography which is the reason for having a range of fonts. I like the typography to be expressive and relate to each article. If we need an exciting or urgent feature we can use the large condensed font for the headlines. When it needs to be simple and straight forward we can use a sans. And when we need to be delicate and subtle we have the serif.
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MATT CURTIS HAS REDESIGNED THE MAGAZINE SINCE HE STARTED TO WORK THERE. AFTER HE GRATUATED FROM SOLENT UNIVERSITY IN 2009, HE WORKED AS ART DIRECTOR IN EUREKA.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN THE FONTS, AND WHAT DO YOU SEARCH FOR WHEN FINDING A GOOD FONT? I wanted to modernise the magazine, with a gentle nod to the original classic. All the fonts I used are Kris Sowersby’s. Tiempos was influenced by Stanley Morison’s classic Times New Roman which was in the original magazine. So it feels like Times New Roman for 2015. That is our body copy and stand firsts. We use Calibre for the sans serif and Manuka is new condensed sans he drew for us for. So we have 3 families.
AS ART DIRECTOR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, HOW DOES YOUR WEEK LOOK LIKE? Monday quiet, Tuesday busy, Wednesday very busy, Thursday too busy, Friday quiet.
WHAT IS THE FEELING YOU WANT THE READERS TO GET? Excited,engaged and surprised. But these all have to be balanced with ease of reading.
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AT FIRST SIGHT the magazines look quite similar, but taking a closer look, they have several different aspects. To start with, their choice of typography is pretty much the same, with a serif-font as main font. This gives the magazines a serious expression, and suits the target groups well. In addition to this they both use a sans-serif font. This often appears in intro pages to an article, and other text groups with facts and other additional information to the articles. Despite of this, A-Magasinet has a more consequent use of their typefaces, and it is easier to see an entirety throughout the whole magazine. Headlines, subheads, body texts and fact boxes always have the same style, and this helps giving the magazine a complete and good visual look. The pictures are of good quality in both of the magazines, and you can see that both use professional photographers. The grid in the magazines do also have similar look, with the variation of two and three columns, and some half columns with information in between the body text. As with the typography, A-magasinet is more consequent when it comes to the use of grid as well. They have used the same grid in the same sections, while it can vary more in The Sunday Times Magazine.
The content is much the same, but The Sunday Times Magazine can sometimes look a little more unserious. My conclusion after comparing the two magazines is that A-Magasinet is a better magazine than The Sunday Times Magazine, even though there is certain similarities, A-Magasinet has a better entirety and seems to be better thought through. The hexagon is very characteristic for the magazine and makes it easy to recognize, which I think is a big plus. It also use more white space and is printed on a better paper, which I think lifts up the quality and gives it a more exclusive expression. all tough it is important to concider that The Sunday Times Magazine has taken the choice of using a big variation intentionally, and because of that I think it is fine that they vary as much as they seem to do. I think it brings extra life to their magazine.
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Screenprint and letterpress: Katrine Sæter
Letterpress: Katrine Sæter Picture: Scanned covers from The Sunday Times Magazine issues. Text: Katrine Sæter
Pictures: From The Sunday Times Magazine and A-Magasinet Text: Katrine Sæter
Ilustration: Katrine Sæter Text: Katrine Sæter
Picture: Scanned covers from A-Magasinet Text: Katrine Sæter
Screenprint: Katrine Sæter Picture: From The Sunday Times Magazine
Screenprint and letterpress: Katrine Sæter Text: Editorial Design, By Yolanda Zappaterra, 2007
Picture: Typo from The Sunday Times Magazine
Illustration: Katrine Sæter
Screenprint: Katrine Sæter Pictures: From The Sunday Times Magazine and A-Magasinet
Screenprint and letterpress: Katrine Sæter
Picture: Typo from The Sunday Times Magazine and A-magasinet