ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the scholarly study of magazine design, which falls into three overlapping areas: theoretical, applied and historical. It reviews what scholars have written since 1990 about the design of magazines—in other words, the use of the elements of design such as photos, illustrations, text, type and space in combination to create magazines. Magazines are included in the content of many more books about design, typography and visual communication. Paul Cleveland incorporates Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s theory of visual grammar, as well as the theories and works of about 80 scholars in his doctoral thesis, which explored the factors that influence magazines’ evolving design. Cleveland also determined that technology has influenced how magazines deploy visual power by making altering and layering text and photos easier. Frame theory is another tool researchers might use to study magazine design. Research that uses frame theory has focused mostly on media texts.
