Customer Reviews

Magazine Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Magazine Design (That Works Series)

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

 

 

Anyone who is looking for a collection of beautiful magazine pages and spreads might give this 5 stars, but I was hoping that more would be delivered in fulfillment of the subtitle: "Secrets for Successful Magazine Design."

Most of the images are of opening pages/spreads of articles or departments; I noticed no complete layouts, only a few continued pages and only one page that had to accomodate fractional ads. Thus, the emphasis was on art, more than on technique.

Two pages under the title, "Eleven Steps to a Successful Redesign," were heavy on "what-to" rather than "how-to." One of the "steps" is: "Get your inside designers involved." Alright! But folks like me, who has often been able to look in the mirror and say, "Good morning editor, publisher, designer, production manager," that is a beautiful dream.

In short, if you know magazine design and want to consider the artistic approaches of others, this is a book for you. If you are new to magazine design and want to learn its "secrets," you won't discover many here.

I found this book to be a good place to look for inspiration and overall themes. It doesn't get too much into the nitty-gritty, hard-working pages of ads mixed with content, but it does talk about process and consistency of voice. The author lets several editors explain the design choices they made when faced with title relaunches and updates, and how those choices reinforced the type, photography, writing style, and illustrations used. There are rationale breakdowns of section headers, feature articles, grids, typography, photographic styles, etc, for several well-maintained and respected magazines.

I think a person's appreciation of this book depends on their particular field and learning style. I work as a graphic designer for a number of different hobby magazines, and my learning style is that of a sponge - I see something, I soak it up. This book was PERFECT for me. I like to page through it, soak up the ideas, immerse myself in these various styles of good design before embarking on my own projects. I have a number of design collections, but this is the best one I've seen that's magazine specific. I also found the articles interesting and to the point, but they are more of a supplement to the designs.

Briefly looking through this book you can quickly see that it is not a technical design book.

It does a very nice job at praising various popular magazines, and it does highlight fundamental design practices within magazine design.

It is a good overview book. It is also a good book to see many images of successful magazines without having to hunt down various magazines.

However, the problem is the book does not going into the technical process of magazine layout. Magazine layout IS a very technical process that most books don't explain. There is much about the grid - it is extremely important and very under estimated. It is also more simple than most people would think. There is also much about magazine layout and structure this book will not cover. Also about the whole process, from layout to print. There are a MILLION questions and problems that pop-up while designing a magazine. Many considerations and variables that vary. This book does not bring up any of those.

Can you design a magazine after reading this book? No.
Can you evaluate and understand magazines better after reading this book? Yes.
Can you get a feeling for what magazine design is about after reading this book? Yes.
Can you get some great ideas out of this book? Yes. ...you can also get them by looking through quality magazines.

Very helpful in what's "hot" in magazine design. Covers differnt genres in mag. design. Extensive reasearch and helps generate different design ideas. Only complaint: Took 2 long to recieve. From my order date, it took over a month.

Not a very useful or practical "how-to" like I thought it would be. This book is more conceptual, when what I really wanted was a more instructional book.

I'm just launching a new magazine, so I have alot to learn. I have read some terrific books; this is not one of them. Basically the pictures are nice, but I honestly cannot think of one thing I learned from this book.