Editorial Designer (Magazine)

What is Editorial Design?

Editorial Design is an exercise in combining technical detail with artistic flair. The core components of editorial design are text and pictures, so a keen understanding of typography, layouts, grids and composition is essential. In fact, magazines perhaps more than any other format show how the many elements of graphic design can come together in one place: images, illustration, photography, logos and mastheads, information design, paper stock and so on.

Changes & Current Force Within Editorial Design (Magazine)

Beginnings of Print Magazines

Magazines as known as periodicals, serials, glossies, slicks are publications that appear on a regular schedule and contain a variety of articles. 

They are financed by advertising, a purchase price, prepaid subscriptions or sometimes all three of these means. 

The English word magazine recalls a military storehouse of war materiel and originally was derived from the Arabic word makhazin meaning "storehouses." The term magazine was coined for this use by Edward Cave, editor of The Gentleman's Magazine. 

The first modern general-interest magazine, The Gentleman's Magazine was published due to people are interest in different topics, news and articles rather than political news during 18th century. The magazine published in England as entertainment with essays, stories, poems and political commentary. 

The Gentleman's Magazine was printed in black and white color only, the printing cost was high, and the number of printed copies could not be greater than one hundred thousand, because it was technically impossible to squeeze a larger amount of paper through the machine. Distribution was also a big problem because it was difficult to move large quantities of magazines at great distances.

Rise of the Magazines

In the mid of 18th century to the earlier of 19th century, there were no computers and almighty Photoshop, everything was done manually by editorial designer, and the main tools were pencils, erasers, rulers, tape. It took around 4 months to produce one issue. 

In the wake of increasing peoples' interest and demand in the society, the types of magazine become variety, such as: Business Magazine, Travel Magazine, Fashion Magazine, Food Magazine and etc. Fortune, a business magazine is known for being the first high-quality printed magazine, with pages in full color and also invented photo-journalism. 

Evolution of the Magazines

Photo-journalism, or the telling of stories through photography, also became popular during the early 20th century. Although magazines has been running illustrations since the 19th century, as photography grew in popularity so did picture magazine. 

During 19th century, there are provocative, fashion and celebrity magazines from different country, these kind of magazine has been the most selling one. Those years brought a boom of women's magazines. The paper quality of magazines are improve, most of the magazine started to print on glossy paper rather than normal paper. 

Electronic Magazine

In 20th century, as advanced technology developed, internet has play an important role in our life, we can search everything we want to know through internet and without go to library or book shop to find the information that we need. Some publisher saw website as as a good platform and opportunity to reach an audience electronically and more economically than was possible with print medium, so they published E-zine on web.

An early use of the term E-zine (electronic magazine) described a new kind of website that contained a stylized mixture of content conveyed in a way that exploited and celebrated the web as a new information medium. E-zine is also used to described any print magazine such as National Geographic that also has an electronic edition. In addition, E-zine also include e-mail newsletters, of which there are thousands that can be subscribed to. 

Smart Electronic Devices

In the 21st century, many publisher switched their magazines to conventional formats to save money on paper and mailing. The editorial content started to moving online, shrinking to fit computer screens and even smaller for smartphone (I phone or Samsung), PDAs and 140 character tweets. 

Print publications already under siege by the internet and 24-hour news cycle, people adapt to  a world of instantaneous updates. This is most obvious for news and business publications, but it's just as true for fashion, entertainment and specialized titles.

In the society today, people have a busy lifestyle, thanks to the advent smartphone , we can access any magazines in the palm of our hand. People go for online magazine than printed magazine because of the reason below:-
- convenience 
- speed and accessibility
- cost effective
- variety
- easy to use
Besides, online magazines are enriched with video, sound than paper-based contents and thereby more interesting and interactive.

Print is Not Dead

The article below is from a site call Magazine Designing, which I love one of the subtitle there - "Print is Not Dead", and I used it as the conclusion for all my findings.

Some have predicted the death of the magazines, just like they have predicted the death of the newspapers in the 90′s, but neither newspapers died, and neither will the magazines. There will still be printed magazines, no matter how popular tablet editions are. Yes, the numbers will drop but they will never die.

IPad is a great tool, and it brings new possibilities in magazine production for sure, but it cannot replace that feeling of paper between your fingers. That smell of freshly printed pages. There will always be a need for printed magazines.

Magazines shape our lives, telling us what to wear, what to eat, what to think about ourselves and the world around us. Although this is the age of the Internet, we continue to enjoy magazines, admire their pages, editorials, headlines. Is there anything nicer than to come home after a hard day’s work, put on slippers, sit back in a sofa and read a favorite magazine that you just grabbed at the local newsstand?