Structure, System, & Form
Analyzing Monocle
Starting this project off, I didn’t know too much about grid structure and many of the other terms listed on the back of the assignment sheet, and how they relate to publications. However, I find magazine design interesting in how it relates to its audience and the clear visual styles and choices you can notice between different magazines.
The magazine I was assigned was Monocle, a magazine that I occasionally casually pick up in airports and flip through to see some photos, but I have never actually read, so I was excited to look further in depth into the magazine.
To start the project out, I decided with Stefanie that I would analyze the print magazine, and her the web, and then we would come together to compare/contrast our findings.
Initial findings
When flipping through the print magazine, I noticed some particular design elements of the magazine that I recorded
Visually:
- a serif font was used
- an illustration was on the cover
- there were bright colors on the exterior of the mag, but inside, a few hints of millennial pink and light yellow were used to denote certain things or highlight
- lots of images were used to support articles
- illustrations were used & had brighter, primary colors
- the stories/articles generally have similar visual style (except for the illustrative stories)
- content is organized based off kind of section it falls into(lettered off): A=affairs, B=business, C=culture, D=design, E=entertainment, F=fashion, which are used to transition through the magazine in a book-like manner
- the paper type changes in the middle with the special section & at the end with the product /advertised collab shop
- the types of articles range from: reports, briefings, surveys, residence (which is looking at the design/architecture of someones home), q&a, photoshoot, & a story on a person they do every publication called “my last meal”
- very packed pages
after this, I started to go more into depth about the subsections themselves, and what is provided in each, however I determined that the only thing really seperating these subsections were the content itself and whether it fell into the category. besides that, each article in the subcategory had slightly different layouts based on what the article’s structure of the content was (if it was a briefing article: it way composed a certain way vs. if it were a photo story it was composed of a visual picture and text composition)
creating the grids
I also wanted to grab some scans and grid out spreads so I could start to determine the structure and layouts of the pages.
Making these grids, I determined that the articles were placed into 12 column grids, aside from the times (like the image page) when text was not present on the pages. I also notices how little white space was present on all of these pages, and how dense the content laid on the pages. I thought it was a pretty stark comparison to most magazine I tend to see today which are thin and don’t tend to carry this much content on each page throughout the ENTIRE magazine.
about the magazine
in order to connect my findings to far to something more about maybe the audience or the goals of the magazine, I wanted to research the actual magazine a bit more.
I discovered it was launched in 2007 by a man named Tyle Brule in London, England and was created to “provide a global breifing on global affairs, culture, and design”, along with the tagline “keeping an eye and ear on the world”. Annually, they also release 4 publications throughout the year separate from the magazine itself: called “The Forecast”, “The Escapist”, “Monocle Drinking and Dining” & “The Entrepreneurs”. They also release a season summer weekly publication as well as Monocle guide to cities around the world.
Getting this background, I read more articles about the magazine itself and realized the extent to which Monocle has brought itself to its readers lives, and that people are actually quite opinionated about the magazine.
From articles that painted Monocle in a light of being in the forefront of design and being beautifully produced, to articles bashing the “out of touch” approach of the mag, I discovered a wide variety of details & I wasn’t quite sure where my own stance on the magazine fell.
Diving into the brand Monocle has created, I also researched some about their brand identity and how they have extended it.
From a retail stance: Monocle sells products that cater to their reader’s tastes and also offer coffee concept stores as well as retails to further sell the brand.
I saw many parallels from Monocle to Gwenyth Paltrow’s “Goop”, which caters to a similar lifestyle (Monocle being a more masculine version and Goop the more feminine). Monocles brand identity involves
- looking worldly & intelligent
- addition of radio and retail content (being a 21st century brand)
- ad agency sits in the same building (even ad products fall into the same lifestyle & adds to the identity)
- secures both content and lifestyle touchpoints like no other magazine
- allows readers to feel like they are a part of a high-rolling yet alternative lifestyle
- instantly recognizable logo (mininalist looped M that appears on brand products, web and mag)
- produces almost all of their pictorial and video content for brand coherence
further depth in print
after researching, I went back to the print publication, and looked to see any other discoveries/ideas I could pull out
- the articles are extremely high-brow
- jumps from country to city to shop to product in just a handful of pages
- in relation to other news outlets its a decidedly optimist, global vibe
- messy, but in an elegant & highly curated way
- uses many book techniques (a mook) using “chapters” and is very thick w uncoated stock pages
- content: informative blurbs, clever lists, on page profiles, q& a interviews, full story articles, documentary style photos of places along side straight-up portraits of biz owners, shops and products
- illustrations have a simplicity to them: which flattens out differences, minimizes diversity, and creates a trans-national universe
- has a global chic confidence while other growing threats of nationalist movements are occuring
More specific ideas: I determine the main font in print to be Plantin, used in bold, regular, and italics, and presented at different sizes to promotes hierachy between titles, subtitles, captions and article content. Plantin itself, I discovered it was used in old british printing and is a nod to old journalistic values & conveys tradition (ties into name monocle). The font itself is also clean, well constructed, legible, and is upright. (transitional font)
initial presentations
My initial thoughts for the presentation was approaching it from the tie in between the reader ( called “the monocle man) and the brand identity that falls to the publication and how that is carried throughout the entire structure and content of the magazine.
Focusing on the user “Monocle Man”, I determined some aspects of the demographic involved a packed schedule and lifestyle, shows their status, and is sleek and confident
In relation to Sleek and Confident we would touch on :
- the font and in depth about it
- the sophisticated images
- the composition and images used
- swiss/Japanese style graphic design
In relation to an On-the-go globetrotter we would mention:
- the packed grid structure
- chic/global content (though a bit out of touch)
- travel content
- the color (old fashioned newspaper/taxis&cosomopolitan fast paced life)
& lastly in relation to Creating a Status/Brand we would discuss:
- the online radio, shop, and film as an extension of the brand itself
- branded items in shop that promote high-end lifestyle
We also wanted to make sure we captured some of the differences that occur between web and print. The biggest was that the web’s content is an extension of the print content itself to provide a separate reason to visit the site, and give more to offer to the reader from “monocle” that will add more of their brand to the readers lifestyle. In a macro sense, the color of the web is a bit different from print (black usually used in background), and the grid structure is also different.
Finishing the presentation, I also wanted to really capitalize on how these defining characteristics ultimately define the magazine along with the reader themselves, creating very little divide between the lifestyle in both the magazine and reader.
I find it interesting that even in the office, the brand continues to be promoted: it is kept well design and extremely clean (no purple allowed), the staff encouraged to stay off twitter so that the readers don’t associate their personal life with the brand, and the staff dresses extremely chic.
All of this just adds to this idea of a living brand that Brule wants to extend to all aspects of their reader, while also painting a almost unreachable goal of little humanity and awareness of what is acutally happening in the world around.
post-feedback presentation altering
after presenting on tuesday, we recieved feedback that though we had quite a bit of content, it needed to be organized into a more clear narrative and condensed to flow together a bit more. Also, the visuals needed altering (from design of slides themselves, to adding transitions, and adding more images so the screen could work in conjunction with what we were saying).
The three talking points we decided on were:
- Sophisticated
- opulent
- charming
Through the idea of “sophisticated”, I wanted to talk about
- the images in conjunction with type & hierarchy of images
- the typeface
- the colors/graphics associated with it (metro relation)
- the extension of web content
Through opulence we touch on:
- the grid structure
- the quality of the actual physical mag
- the content (shopping and high end content)
& through charming we mentioned:
- the images & there seductiveness
- the illustrations
- the loft words used
an additional talking points I considered, but we didn’t quite have enough time for was the justification of the text and how the articles have larger type, yet justified on both sides, and smaller text (not in full story articles) have smaller text but is only left justified to make it easier to read.
through this entire process of learning about monocle, its structure, presenting about it, and getting feedback, I feel like a learned a wide variety of things that will prepare me to dive further into the next projects and be more mentally in the headspace of a designer.