Flux in Fashion Magazines

Fashion Magazine

The first notion of fashion illustrated began with the courts of aristocracy recording information about what they were wearing. In the late 16th and 17th century, French women and dressmakers outside of the court relied on sketches to see what was being worn. The sketches were compiled in books that were reproduced and sold, most notably the Mercure Galant.

Since the beginning of 18th century, reading fashion magazine became a sign of a good taste. By that time, Europe had published several magazines, mostly fashion. They published as many as four fashion magazines, all of them were illustrated with color drawings or engraving representing the smallest details of new clothes. These publications started featuring articles about cosmetics, hygiene and physical education, a variety of recipes and even fashion dresses patterns.

In 19th century, fashion magazines begin to feature photography. Magazines begin to expand content to feature journalism articles about women’s suffrage, socialites, men's fashion and articles about working women fashion.enhancements in color printing reduce cost and improve both quantity and quality of magazines available.Fashion media such as cable television begin to compete with magazines.

By the beginning of the 20th century, more new magazines devoted to fashion, needlework and household management appeared. Those magazine's content was of universal nature, from new books and tips on housekeeping to the amusement games and pictures of fashion.

In the past 300 years, fashion magazines have changed a great deal from outside. Yet, the basic topics remain the same - how to become beautiful, loved and happy.

[WEEK 6] Interview Form

[WEEK 5] Qualitative & Quantitative Research

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research help us to understand the attitude and behavior of our target audience which is 25-45 years old working adults with the middle class income level (RM 1000-RM 5000). These working adult have high school above education background, and also own the IT knowledge and accessibility to technology. Based on the target audience we set, we have a research goals to conduct the interview which are to understand people's awareness towards collaborative consumption (there are people do not know about this "sharing" concept) and find out the the reason why people do not share. In my personal thought, I wish to learn how to approach and select our target audience correctly and interview them in order to understand how they think about collaborative consumption and their concern on this sharing concept. The research methodology that I will use will be one to one interview; I set a goal which is to interview 10 people on this topic. This method will help me to focus easily and obtain the accurate information. The question that I’m going to ask will be:

• Do you think collaborative consumption is new trends that will improve our     relationship between people make the society become harmony?
•      Do you have an experience on sharing things to others?
• Is there any issue about collaborative consumption make you concern?

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is to measure our target audience attitudes in a statistically reliable way. The research goals are to identify how many people in this age group do not know about collaborative consumption, and how many people will support the sharing concept. I would like to identify strong evidence and test our hypothesis towards our target audience through the survey or questionnaire that answers by our research relevant group of people. The survey or questionnaire will be conduct via internet and distribute it by go to a place where could easily find our target audience to respond. The question I will ask in the survey form might be:

•      Are you familiar with the term "collaborative consumption?"
• How comfortable would you be sharing your things to others?
• Were you accepting this sharing concept in our society or country?

[WEEK 4] Communication Campaign Objective & Target Audience

I had applied the elements of Four Things to Consider When Setting Campaign Objectives and Five Ways to Narrow Your Target Audience from this website as a guideline to help me in setting campaign objective and target audience.

Objective

1. What is the goal of the campaign?

The goal of this campaign is to last long the virtue of sharing,it can make the world a much better place and advocate harmony between people. In addition, this campaign helps people to understand the benefits of sharing, and sharing can benefit us personally and financially. 

2. Do you want to change public opinion, or communicate messages that are         important to you? 

We tend to consider it a given that sharing is a good thing. As children, we're taught (and made) to share our toys, our crayons, and our rooms. As we age, our toys and our personal space become larger and more expensive, and we share them less and less. People now a day don't share their thing because of many reason. This campaign will helps people change their views on sharing and redefine the significance of collaborative consumption.  

3. Is the campaign short or long-term?

This is the short-term campaign, and it mainly share about how well the collaborative consumption helps in our life and its benefits. We are not focus on educing and make people change their opinion but we wish to see public start sharing by taking a small step such as rent some of their items to people. Besides, we hope to see people are support the concept of collaborative consumption such as they begin carpooling with their colleague or friends.     

4. How can the campaign help us build a stronger community?

Just imagine being part of a movement where people stopped relying on this corporate machine for their every need and started relying more on their friends, family and neighbors, bringing back a sense of community and belonging, breaking down the barriers and shackles of debt and ownership that enslave us. 

Target Audience

1. Which audience best helps you meet your specific campaign objective?

The target audience of this campaign will be 25-30 years old young working adult. Our objective is to let people learn the great value of sharing, understand the importance and benefits of sharing to make this world a better place. They are easy to being attract by something new, and this will be the chance to instill the concept of sharing to them, in order to show them the benefits of sharing. 

2. Is this audience persuadable?

This population they are happy and willing to accept new thing, dare in consumption and enjoy their life although they might earn not much. Collaborative consumption is a great value to let this group of people to learn, they able to try something new and more easier to persuade and approach than other population.

3. Which segment has the most influence and impact?

Young working adult with no much of income and the spirit of courage on accept new things, they are able to adopt and try out on doing something. Collaborative consumption is a new way and opportunity for them to earn some money, reduced personal cost and burden, lower environmental impact, pick up the social responsibility to change the community become better.

4. Can you realistically reach the target audience?

Young working adults have a mature mindset and ability to analyse things, but yet their determination is still unstable and easy to be affected by people, things that surrounded them. We take this as an opportunity to help them change their attitude and behavior towards collaborative consumption and challenge them by taking part on it.

5. Have you applied a ruthless focus?

We will focus on those young working adult who are willing to accept the new concept of sharing with people in the society and involve in the new trend. There might have young working adult who refuse to sharing and giving a cold response to this new trend, however, we do pay attention on people who give a good response and interest in support this campaign.

[WEEK 4] The Benefits & Problems of Collaborative Consumption

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? 

FLUX

Understand FLUX

FLUX = Continuous change and instability

FLUX in graphic design areas can be cause by many factors, such as:

a) social network

b) open source

c) user-centered

d) democratic of authors

e) new tools

f) system thinking

g) pattern recognition

h) rapid prototyping

i)  the maker economy

There are 4 key areas of design in flux we need to identify and analyse which are technological, cultural, social and contextual change in one of the graphic design area that I have to select from mind map.

Mind Map About Graphic Design

According to the mind map we have done above, we choose to focus on Magazine in Editorial Design as the area to do our research.