Magazine Review Assignment.

Design week is a weekly Design Magazine Costing £3.20 as of 10^th September 2009. It Is aimed primarily at mainstream artists with a focus on Corporate Graphics, photography and product design.

At first glance the eye is drawn to the large image on the cover of the magazine, which is consistent in all issues. The text anchors the images because the cover is consistent it makes it easy to find.

Judging from the articles its fair to assume that the magazine is brought mainly by people working in the design industry with articles relating to business, travel, current affairs and even environmental issues. It Is likely it is used mainly as a point of reference for artists and designers in mainstream sectors rather than containing a huge amount of art or art criticism and debate. This is surprising as judging from the title and front cover you might be forgiven for thinking that this would be a good point of research for budding designers. All articles are however well illustrated ( you might find yourself learning more about art and design from the visuals of the article rather than its content)

There is a significant amount of advertising ( approximately 12 pages) which is listed as a directory on the back pages. This further implies that the magazine is more of a reference than research tool.

The text of the magazine is dense and arguably generically laid out. It is very bulky in places which could be intimidating to a new reader. However you would not expect the magazine to be targeted at a mainstream audience, rather a clique of industry specialists. The price of the magazine also supports this theory- at 3.20 is not a good price for the general public however would be affordable and easily disseminated among corporate art circles.

The magazine is written and edited by a number of different people. The magazine may not have a large amount of articles, but the articles it does have call on a varied pool of creators and the articles themselves are in depth and interesting and do cover a variety of subjects ( though disappointingly a very limited selection of critical and informative art and design pieces)

For instance the article “Magical alchemy” talks of the V&A exhibition of fairytale illustrations in the print medium. It talks eloquently about the history and process of printmaking , but apart from a few quotations from artists you get little real opinion or examination. For instance Wuon-Gean Ho’s says:

“I wanted to express their inner emotions, true histories –in effect, faces stripping the mask of social pretences”

This may sound intellectual and interesting but it doesn’t really tell us much at all. We don’t know how the artist has done this and we don’t get any objective opinion on the work.

Overall the magazine has an interesting design but may appear dull and hard to read. However the information it provides would undoubtedly be of use to creative’s working in mainstream design and photography fields. The information is high quality in places but is let down by its lack of opinion and analysis. Overall we would give design week lacking 3 out of 5 stars