A Brief History Of Magazine Design

Magazine design has changed a lot over the last two centuries. Magazines are direct representations of culture and society at the time they were written. Looking at the progression of not only magazine covers, but also the content of the magazines, we can tell a lot about our history. We can also learn a lot about the world around us, and use that information to move our society forward.

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  • 1704 Review was the first magazine-style publication. It was created by Daniel Defore, the author of the Robinson Crusoe. This publication mainly focused on the political climate during the reign of Queen Anne in London.
  • 1731 Edward Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine was published in January of 1731. It was the first of what we consider to be the modern magazine form. The Gentleman’s Magazine was one of the most popular publications of its time. The magazine was a repository, or collection of articles, information, and ideas that reflected culture in a way that no other publication during this time was capable of. The Gentleman’s Magazine was published until 1907.
  • 1741 Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Bradford bring the concept of magazines to America.
  • 1743 The Christian History magazine was published and became the first successful magazine in America. It was published for a few years, which was much longer than the magazines published before it. Unlike our magazines today, The Christian History didn’t have a centralized cover.
  • 1774 Isaiah Thomas established the Royal American Magazine in January and ran it until June of that year. Joseph Greenleaf took over and published the magazine from July until the magazine’s last issue in March of 1775. By the publication’s end, there were 22 full-page engraved plates, 13 of which were signed by Revere, and 3 that were signed by Callender. Most of the content of the magazine was taken from London magazines, and the plates were mostly based on English originals.
  • 1833 Samuel Goodrich published Peter Parley’s Magazine. This magazine was a combination of entertainment and facts designed to teach children about things going on in the world. Peter Parley’s Magazine was one of the first to use stylized covers and a table of contents.
  • 1844 Eliakim Littell established Littell’s Living Age, a weekly literary periodical that sourced various articles from other publications. This magazine marked the era of the immense graphical magazine covers. The new cover designs included vibrant pictures showing war and other political discord at the time.
  • 1860 Irwin and Erastus Beadle published Malaeska, which would become the first American dime novel. Dime novels were cheaper derivatives of the more expensive literature. They were typically printed on cheap pulp paper and distributed in orange wrappers. As dime novels grew in popularity, new distribution methods arose for magazines.
  • 1866 Cosmopolitan Magazine was established as a female-focused publication featuring some modern art and science. The magazine became a source of great writing. It included work from some well-known authors including H. G. Well, Kurt Vonnegut, Willa Cather, Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis. Cosmopolitan Magazine became known for its visually stunning covers featuring the biggest Hollywood Stars.
  • 1885 Clark W. Bryan published Good Housekeeping. Bryan famously said that his goal for the magazine was to, “produce and perpetuate perfection – or as near unto perfection as may be attained in the Household”. This mentality set the president for modern publication structure and ideology. After Bryan’s death, James Eaton Tower took over the magazine from 1899 until 1913.

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The covers of Good Housekeeping were done by famous artists such as R. K. Ryland who did the cover of the March 1902 issue. The standard for magazine cover art continued to be raised, and the expectation was that covers going forward would be visually appealing and impressive.

  • 1886 M. Lupton published The People’s Home Journal, a magazine that directly completed with many of the other female-centric publications. Unfortunately, it could not compete with the other publications and was discontinued in 1929.
  • 1892 Arthur Baldwin Turnure established Vogue Magazine, which was started as a paper for high society women. Initially, Vogue did not use advertising as a revenue source, but this changed as sales for the paper began decreasing. Vogue became the first magazine to gain its revenue from advertising and marketing. This revenue model is now found in nearly all of the most popular publications. In addition to paving the way for new revenue models, Vogue is known for catering solely to the modern American woman. The magazine’s covers started out more illustrative and artistic but later developed into the modern style most of us recognize today.

Looking at the timeline of how magazine content and design has changed, it’s easy to understand how we’ve arrived at our current design trends. While it may seem that our current magazine designs just “popped up” out of nowhere, you can see that the changes happened very slowly and gradually. While there are so many things that have changed, one thing remains: magazines still serve an important role in our society. They aim to inform, entertain and connect us with others in our community.