Digital Magazine Design

Paul Honeywill and Daniel Carpenter.
Intellect, Bristol, U.K., 2003.
160 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 1-84150-086-0.
Paper $29.95, b/w illus.

Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia)

recluse@lis.net.au

This is a nifty little book. At a mere 160 pages it appears slight indeed compared to the usual telephone directory size tomes which graphic design manuals often resemble. However, every line is packed with important, practical information for magazine design students. Even the professional page designer will be able to fine tune their creations from the helpful tips provided throughout the book.

Digital Magazine Design is divided into two separate sections. Part One, Design Skills by Paul Honeywill, contains six chapters which get right into the business of successful magazine page design. There is an introduction to computer use in design, "Stepping up to the Interface" which mentions specifically the software package QuarkXpress. The various chapters then look at; Underlying Principles, Setting up the Page, Manipulating the Page, Understanding Type and Potential Problems.

Whilst this book introduces budding zine designers to the use of computers in design it does not specifically get into the fine detail of how to use software applications. Back to telephone directory size tomes for that. It covers the concepts of user-friendliness, visual recognition of screen icons and so on, all of which are characteristic of contemporary programmes.

Computers have revolutionised graphic design, not in its fundamental principles, but in the physical process of type layout, pasting graphics into pages by hand and allowing greater scope in non-rigid column layouts. One of the things that really impressed me about this book is the author’s insistence that good design is good design, regardless of the tools used to implement it. Just because a new tool (the computer) comes along it does not mean that the tried and tested basics of design, colour theory, composition, psychological appeal of type to content and so on can be disregarded, or worse, not learnt at all.

If a magazine fails to communicate the intended information whether it be feature article, advertisement or editorial, then the designer has failed at his or her task. Part of this successful communication involves knowing the target audience, together with its idiosyncrasies — this is an essential aspect of a designer’s stock-in-trade. For example, as Honeywill stresses regularly, the design of a magazine for, investment opportunities for retirees will be totally different from the design for a pop music zine for teenagers.

Part Two of the book, by Daniel Carpenter, analyses the successful (or otherwise) design of a number of "high street" magazines. This study is the work of a number of different postgraduate publishing students. They used Part One of the book as a reference guide in their analyses. These students had no design background but being in the publishing business they must be able to assess a magazine’s potential success. "This is achieved through the analysis of a magazine publication’s physical architecture, graphic and typographic personality, method of production and intended readership" (p. 6).

The magazines in the Case Study section cover a broad range of publications and include; Essential, Shout, Kerrang!. Hotline, Hi-Fi News, She, Real Simple, Empire and Classic FM.

One thing that puzzles me a little about this book is the rather limited amount of discussion about colour theory and the powerful psychological affect of colour. I would have thought this would be a major concern for page designers but apparently the use of "white space" and contrast of page elements is of more importance?

I think this book will be a useful addition to the reference libraries of all serious magazine design students and an indispensable manual for the occasional designer of publications, such as school or club newsletters, brochures and posters.