January 2008

The Archives

• In the Ether, Off the racks, Shameless self-promotion

  Monkey Business

  01.30.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  If there are things an American magazine designer shouldn’t see, Monkey is certainly on the list. My essay on the new digital magazine from Dennis (the folks responsible for Maxim, FHM, The Week, etc.) is now up on AIGA Voice. I argue that Monkey is appalling but is here to fore the most convincing attempt [...]

• The Stacks

  Pages

  01.29.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  By Way of MagCulture: a look at Black culture through magazine pages on Flikr; and by way of Publication Design, a gallery of Metropoli pages on Speak Up.

• Art Direction

  Times ten

  01.29.08 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  I’ve been reluctant to write about Janet Froelich for fear of coming off like a freshman painting student conceding some small admiration for the work of Picasso. Her art direction of the New York Times Magazine is legendary, as well as a continuous source of inspiration to the pub. design community. So, I won’t blubber [...]

• Art Direction

  Text and Image

  01.25.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Understanding Comics is a book I had been aware of for some years, but I hadn’t given it much thought until one of my students shamed me into reading it, along with one of its two sequals (Making Comics) over the holiday break. I’m glad I did. I have no plans to chuck it all [...]

• Misc.

  Advertorial, Part II

  01.22.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Pursuant to my recent post about advertorial, I thought I’d post this particularly ingenious fake ad section from the November 2007 Ladies Home Journal. The back cover (above) is the start of an entire—albeit brief—fake magazine, printed upside-down, (of course) so that the binding is on the left. Despite my contention that fake ads are [...]

• Art Direction

  Bland Rage

  01.20.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  . Lots of buzz online about the termination of editor Dave Seanor over this cover, which refers to a thoughtlessly stupid remark by golf anchor Kelly Tighman. On the one hand, MediaBistro agrees that termination was justified. On the other, MediaBistro feels the firing was an over-reaction. It’s worth noting that the controversy over this [...]

• Redesigns

  Bon Appétit

  01.17.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  I don’t like writing about redesigns unless I have examples from both before and after, but Bon Appétit’s new issue is too stunning to resist making a few comments. And, while I can’t get as specific as I would like about what changed—drawing only on my vague memories of the dry, stuffy and antiquated previous [...]

• Teaching

  Syllabi

  01.16.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  I now have 12- and 16-week syllabi in both PDF and Word format on the Designing Magazines teaching page, along with a few more resources for those adopting the book for classroom use.

• New Launches

  I’ve been…

  01.14.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  I wrote a post a while back that was critical of JPG Magazine. Within 45 seconds (approximately), Business Director Devin Poolman responded with a long, thoughtful, and well-argued (though ultimately unconvincing) rebuttal to my argument that JPG was essentially a fraudulent venture. Oh, I didn’t mean that JPG isn’t a magazine, or even that the [...]

• Pages

  Advertorial

  01.10.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  What is it about the sort of fake ads and advertorial sections you find nearly any week in the national Sunday newspaper magazines, commonly in B-to-B’s, and occasionally in newsstand glossies—particularly low-end women’s and health-oriented titles. On the one hand, they seem stridently unethical—designed to confuse the reader into thinking (at least long enough to [...]

• Off the racks

  Lump Some

  01.08.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  You see magazines you like, you see magazines you don’t like so much, but how often do you see a publication that makes your heart go pitter-pat, pitter-pat with excitement? For me at least, Lumpen, a magazine out of Chicago is one such publication, made all the more thrilling because it’s a member of an [...]

• In the Ether

  Backstage New York

  01.04.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Speaking of Print, their web site has a short behind-the-scenes look at New York’s recent section reshuffling.

• Off the racks, Shameless self-promotion

  [Few] Answers

  01.04.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  I have an article on the new Creation Museum just outside of Cincinnati in the current issue of Print Magazine. My first draft of the article, which was roughly 20,000 words too long, had a brief passage on Answers Magazine—alas, one of the casualties of the editing process. Answers in Genesis owns both the museum [...]

• Teaching

  Anatomy of a Page

  01.04.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  For those teaching with Designing Magazines I’ve put up a couple of resources designed to help bridge the gap between the book’s professionally oriented content and the need for introductory material in an undergraduate course. The first is a guide to magazine page anatomy and terminology, and the second is my recent page on tables [...]

Designing Magazines

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Designing Magazines is a book and blog edited by Jandos Rothstein. The book is published by Allworth Press You’ll find contributor biographies and links here.

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