Okay folks, here’s the first crack at decoding the editorial design messages in our favourite magazines.

First up:  Frankie magazine, Issue 33.

Editorial Design Text*: Editorial Design by Yolanda Zappaterra

About Frankie

• Bi-monthly Australian magazine published by Morrison Media
• Frankie “celebrates and enhances the reality of its readers lives, in a unique and extraordinary way” – morrisonmedia.com.au
• They describe their readers as those who “gave up on conventional mainstream magazines long ago” – Frankie media kit.
• Notion towards collectability, to really play into the idea that magazines are cultural artefacts, rather than mere pages of advertisements
• 70% of readers are between the ages of 20-25 years old
• Circulation Jan-Jun 2009: 32601
• Readership: 146 704

Design Characteristics:

Minimalist, matte finish and muted colour palette with lots of artsy photography.

The Cover: Click to enlarge…

Inside the issue:

“You’re the Best”, p. 61

Design features: Headlines, Bylines, Visual Reporting, Body Copy and Legibility.

This story demonstrates many of the design techniques Frankie uses to lure readers into reading their stories, and also to create visually appealing pages.

The headline on page 64, persuades the reader to read on by leading the eye directly to the stand first, a feature which aims to “summarise and sell the story in a pithy way”(p. 63) below the main text. The byline follows after, completing a neat cluster of a text in the upper left hand corner of the page, visually complementing the figure in the behind photograph.

Photography is a huge aspect of Frankie’s concept. A tendency towards art, instead of fashion, based photography is evident. Photography in magazines and newspapers acts as a form of visual reporting, storytelling, if you will, and must enhance and relate to the story it’s attached to to expand upon the meaning and interpretation of the reader. These images are manipulated in terms of scale and detail, their cropping and position being two key factors in determining their effectiveness. In this story, Frankie combines the two: the photographs feature those reported about in the story, but are also works of art in their own right. The composition and framing of the photographs has also been factored into the way the headline text is positioned, both working together to create a pleasing visual for the reader.

Body copy refers to the main text of a publication. According to Zappaterra, editorial designers must look at blocks of texts as ’shapes’, rather than words, which makes designing a page much easier. Theory states that text which is centred or ranged right is tiring to read, so most publications feature left justified text.  Ultimately, articles are meant to be read and must be ‘legible’. Line lengths of 45-65 characters, according to Fassett’s theorem of legible line length(p.122), are the most appropriate. Frankie’s fall nicely in the middle of this bracket (I counted and everything!).

Traditionally, magazines will feature three columns of text (p.122), however “literary magazines often use two wide columns” for symmetry that “shout[s] ‘we’re intellectual’. The use of white space surrounding the text helps to soften the page. However, Frankie’s articles are often quite short in length, thus instead of appearing overly intellectual and snobbish, the two columns aid in bringing a serious edge to quirky and light hearted material.

In Summary:

Good parts:

1. The simplistic design is refreshing and reader friendly

2. Follows editorial design conventions and theories outlined by Zappaterra

3. Photography is used effectively to illustrate stories and to visually divide pages, leading readers through stories.

4. Due to the simplicity, uniformity of each page as well as each issue is easy to maintain, encouraging a specific ‘Frankie-style’.

Bad parts:

1. Simple, or bland and boring?

2. At times, the text seems overpowered by the size of the photographs. Despite falling into theoretical legibility, text appears to have succumbed to the whims of design, rather than speaking for itself.

3. The lack of direction on the cover in terms of main cover lines – are all stories really created equal?

4. Is the fact that all covers are very similar in terms of layout and colour palette damaging or an assets to the publication?

What have we learnt about editorial design from Frankie, Issue 33:

Cover design, though simplistic, is key in defining a character for a magazine and attracting particular readers. Also, the cover contains some of the most important information about the magazine, including the title and the issue information such as cost.

Photography is infinitely useful in helping tell a story and a key characteristic of magazines.

Body copy aims to be legible and easy to read, but also acts within the page as a shape to help in creating an appealing visual layout for the reader.

Headlines, bylines, stand firsts and taglines are all crucial aspects of magazine layouts. These are often manipulated in terms of typography size, style, strength and so forth.

Next time: Shop Til You Drop

* any page number references will be found within this text.