Practical - Self-led Crit 12.11.2018 - Idea Generation

In order to give my practical work some direction, I took part in a critique with several other people from the class. This meant that I could develop my ideas and talk about the potential routes I could go down for the design work.

My current essay question is: 'How do feminist publications communicate with their audience?' which seems to naturally lead to the idea of creating a feminist magazine for my practical work. This would be a publication that would reflect modern feminism but also pay tribute to past iterations of feminist publication design, i.e. suffrage pamphlets.

From my research I narrowed down several characteristics that feminist magazines often demonstrate. These included:

1. A promotion of community.
2. An engagement with the audience.
3. The potential to be the voice for disempowered people.
4. To inspire the reader.
5. To not dismiss typical depictions of femininity. It can offer different interpretations of femininity, but the current 'female aesthetic' cannot be dismissed as it can cause people to be put off from engaging with the magazine.  

The magazine needs to be contemporary and considered, it needs to reflect the points given above but also show an exciting and compelling style of design. The typeface, grid, imagery, stock and binding needs to be thought about carefully. I was considering experimenting with several different types of stock within the magazine in order to keep the reader engaged and to offer high gloss imagery without spending money on full gloss throughout the entire magazine, making it more economical. I also wanted to consider having a smaller insert in the center of the magazine which would celebrate the first feminist publications made using a traditional printing method on thinner stock.

Crit Feedback:

A suggestion was that if the magazine is going to have several different stocks, each stock could represent a section of the magazine. E.g. the gloss pages are the most contemporary articles. The smaller, middle section about historical feminist publications could be made in a more light and cheap stock, to reflect the types of paper used in the past. This sections could even have several quotes and insights from the historical chapter of the essay. I should reference the layouts and designs of suffragette publications for this section; perhaps using traditional printing methods for it too.

For the imagery accompanying the articles it was suggested that I could do a combination of collage and illustrations overlapping next to the text. We discussed how if authors are giving me images to accompany their texts that, even if these are bad quality, the pictures are personal and are part of the authors voice. They should be able to be reworked so they seem professional within the context.

It was suggested I look at typefaces like Baskerville for a contemporary feel, and that I could have several consistent typefaces and then several experimental and random typefaces throughout to hold the reader's interest. Typefaces and grids are two key elements I need to research.

We discussed the different binding options briefly, with a perfect bind considered for it's professional aesthetic and a simple fold and staple considered for its authenticity as a magazine. I have not had much experience in perfect binding so perhaps it might be difficult to achieve the 'perfect' finish, it also is used for magazines with a large number of pages, which I might not necessarily have. However stapling doesn't seem high end enough for the type of magazine I envision. This is also something I need to further research and might become clearler once I know how many pages there will be and the thickness of the stocks I am using.

One of my ideas was to have the front cover of the magazine as tissue paper to represent delicate femininity which could be torn off to access the main magazine. This idea was built upon so that the tissue could be a package that the magazine is delivered in, which the reader has to then rip open; allowing them to engage with the experience and to metaphorically discard their delicate femininity. Another idea I had was to letterpress the cover of the tissue, so that it just has the title, for a minimalist effect.

Something I need to work on is who my audience is. Since many of the authors who've agreed to contribute are students, perhaps the audience should be students? However, since I have such a contemporary focus, perhaps the magazine should be more expensive and aimed at an audience with expendable income. Perhaps categorising the audience as 'young feminists' is enough, but this will need further thought.