Customer Reviews

Issues: New Magazine Design

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

one of the best magazine design books, hands down. this book showcases the most progressive magazines out there as well as some nicely designed spreads. more than just pictorials, it goes into what each magazine is about and the concept behind it/cover. well designed and a great resource

This is a decent overview of what happened to magazine design when desktop publishing became mainstream in the '90s. Each of the book's five sections are preceded by a pretty decent 2-page introduction to the various elements (format, covers, pace, words, pictures) and are inset with a section highlighting particular magazines (Blow, Vanidad, 2wice, Speak, Econy). The lessons learned aren't particularly shocking: indie magazines have more flexibility of format, the excesses of Raygun designer David Carson led to a backlash of formalism, sometimes less is more, etc. The book is chock full of examples of covers and spreads (mostly from European fashion and style magazines), which is all very nice and most designers will find inspiration here and there. My own favorites are the vertical format of Spanish magazine In Juve and the covers of the magazine produced by British newspaper The Independent. However, like almost every design book about magazines, it's not particularly practical for the average designer (eg. the constraints imposed by advertising are glossed over), but serves more as design porn. And while it's kind of interesting to see how some designers push the envelope on format, examples like the $425 issue 24 of Visionaire are more alienating than inspiring. Finally, Leslie apparently thought it would be interesting or "designery" to run all the captions perpendicular to the the rest of the contents, forcing one to turn the book 90 degrees every spread. That's not interesting, it's just stupid and annoying.

Being an avid reader of magazines for as long as i can remember, i found that this book was very informative on the reasons why they are so appealing: with many interesting examples of avant-garde magazine designs, or just simply intelligent concepts, this book is a must for any magazine addict. A great addition to my library!

I gave it a star for the cover. Inside, there is little to draw from and would make for another coffee table book soon to be recycled. Sorry, but thumbs down.

It gives you a good idea of how far the contemporary magazinedesign has come in the last 8 years