Analyse the use of text and visuals in magazines.

Magazines use visual imagery to show what the feature is about, coincide with the text or feature content. They are also a part of a magazine’s brand or conceptual ideas, to sell magazines. They also convey what is important for that month’s edition or maybe something that is in the air or in vogue at the time.
A magazine’s choice in visuals, and use of visuals could be because something has to be addressed in a certain way, and through visual imagery.
There are many other reasons why visuals play such an important part of magazines especially Women’s magazine’s, where imagery and image are intertwined with our ideals as women. These ideals of what it means to be female are edited by leading women’s magazines and are conceptualised during one month’s edition or even that year through a year book, periodical or jounal. Magazine use of visuals also convey and reflect what is projected through the media- things that are concurrent to their ideas, fashion and trends. By not including certain visuals and choosing another they are also taking into consideration the ‘importance to highlight’ what they don’t want to showcase in their magazine and what clashes with them, their ideas, plans, and conceptualisation(s).
This means that an ‘Elle’ girl wouldn’t buy something boring and conventional as she prefers to be ‘bold’ and ‘dares to be different’. The editor’s choice in visuals each edition are strong, obvious, striking and stripped of niceties, using models with pronounced features most of the time - bordering on the slightly garish side of beauty and aesthetics. This reflects their feelings about their magazine and their readership, and the fact that their personality reflects all this, especially a crude personality or secretly overeating, or maybe their religious values or their family values. Magazine use of visuals is a controversial subject area, especially within popular media and culture. To think that magazines ‘objectify women’ through art and visual imagery keeps that debate alive, slowly habitualising the issue -Pavlov’s Theory on Classical Conditioning. Whether they are or not is not the issue, this debate is kept alive through various feminist groups.
The importance of visual imagery in magazines like Marie Claire, Vogue, Elle and Glamour is undeniable, and can also be the process of what it means to be a woman, female or girl, in today’s modern world too. It can be part of defining your own personal identity, and creating new social groups too- Social Identity Theory/ Tajfel and Turner 1979.
This again intertwines with the marketing and publishing aspect of a magazine. It also has a lot to do with their conceptualisation of their magazine imagery and also if it is an area which is something worthy of publication, and will it be in their regular reader’s interest and also new ones? It is also important for reasons such as to simply grab attention, attract new readers and usually the bottom line - to simply make art and iconic visual imagery, create compelling and contemporary conceptualisation and also most importantly to make money.
The visual imagery department for fashion shoots of magazines such as Marie Claire, Elle, Glamour and Company don’t have a big budget sometimes, and it may appear glamorous and glitzy, but in truth there is a lot of artistic work which has to be pulled together with expertise and skills, with virtually no budget. Although having very little funds does stretch the imagination and creates art through the process of let’s say creating a fashion shoot with no money. It forces people to co-operate, say yes to a project if it is in their interest, or something that is true to their heart, and is a chance to embark on a great artistic concept or excellent work experience, creating great visuals for magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire, and Glamour.
Glamour magazine’s choice to create 6 paged beauty supplements for make-up was an amazing turning point for magazines. They showcased make-up in the same way you would create imagery for a fashion shoot, finally addressing the importance of cosmtics and make- up for countless women. The visuals were exciting, trendy and groundbreaking. Magazines first Beauty pages with the same clout and gravitas as a fashion spread.
So what about text? Text in a magazine is meant to be eye catching, grab your attention and for many to focus mainly on headlines. Magazines tend not to focus on the actual body of text too much, it should be ambiguous for the reader, and an excellent headline should compel the reader to trust the magazine and buy the magazine, and read it at their own leisure.
This means that magazines share a responsiblity to promote ‘good ethics’ aswell as having astute marketing techniques, wanting you to simply buy the magazine based on a compelling front cover and their catchlines, creating a relationship of trust between the publishers of a magazine and the consumer. Magazines such as Marie Claire, Elle, Vogue, and Company have an excellent relationship with text. Moshiv Nadav a cutting edge font designer for fashion magazines is creating new fonts, glyphs and typefaces for magazines such as Elle, Vogue, and Style from the Sunday Times. When asked he claimed that these magazines primarily use ‘bodoni text’ and are crazy about using a modern version of this font with extra glyphs which can be created by him and similar companies.
Fashion typograhy such as Lingerie and Paris certainly create a new artistic appeal to text, and featuring magazine content and articles. With thousands of new ligatures, and new swashes for each letter, it is an exciting new addition to the way magazines such as Vogue, Elle, and Marie Claire feature writing.
Not only that, re-creating magazine magic is possible at home, as it’s possible to buy proffesional looking fonts, glyphs, typefaces and ligatures for a small price online. Editors are keen to make use of these new companies, which bring people closer together in this way.
In conclusion magazines use visual imagery for many reasons, all cited above. Their relationship with text is important too, creating catchy bold headlines to grab attention, and informative text to read at your leisure later once you have purchased a magazine such as Vogue, Elle or Glamour, almost like letting you read the fine print later.