OUGD601 PRIMARY RESEARCH

I attended a magazine launch by AIGA Eye On Design upon the launch of their #4 issue entitled 'worth'. Eye On Design magazine turns heads towards the worlds most exciting design and are published by the wolds largest/oldest non-profit design organisations, AIGA. They talked through the process of creating that specific issue and the mainly the topic at hand. Their target audience was the emerging design community and they wanted to educate their audience upon the value of their own work and others. This was done beautifully within their very carefully designed editorial and abstract page spreads. By simply flicking through this magazine, you can tell is possessed something more then your average coffee table mag. It was fuelled with passion and strong ideas.

After the talk was over, I had the chance to briefly ask the two editors, Meg Miller and Madeline Morley, some more specific questions that related to my topic.

Q: How do you keep your audience excited when reading they your physical matter? 

They stated that each issue they would hire a new graphic designer to create the layout and page design. This would keep the readers more engaged with the release of each issue, ensuring they wouldn't get bored of the same format every time. Once they had collected all the content, images, interviews, articles etc, they would hand them all over to the designer who would then spend a month or two generating the printed matter. The designer of this issue was David Benski. Something he included in this issue to make it more engaging was small price tags on certain pages accounting for elements of the issues production. This playfully reflects back to the topic of the issue at hand. To make sure the audience was familiar with the designer of the issue, a free 16 page zine is also included with the magazine, featuring a small portfolio of that designers work. Benski continued to use abstract layouts and typesetting, forcing the reader to interact with the publication in ways they wouldn't normally have too. One last thing they would do to the physical format of the publication was die-cut a hole on the front of every issue. This would act as a title in a sense given the fact they would not use a typical header on their covers. This would be repeated upon every cover, ensuring you knew that what you were holding was Eye On Design given the fact each issue would look so drastically different.

Q: What is the relationship between the print and digital platform for Eye On Design magazine?

They explained how for years prior to this moment they were solely an online platform for three consecutive years, publishing similar articles and stories as today. Once they finally obtained enough funding to go print they took the opportunity. At that point they had already a large audience of online readers that were soon converted to print. They believe that going print has opened the doors to in fact more readers. They expressed how their print format would allow them to be more flexible with their topics and stories, targeting a specific design discipline each issue which they believed to be unachievable via digital. They now keep small articles, stories, quizzes and other interactive elements on their online platform and the larger stories in print. This was done to help their audience understand certain disciplines in greater detail. Now, Eye On Design work within a happy medium of both print and digital. They also stated they wouldn't have gotten where they have today without the help of their digital platform. This is solely due to marketing and advertising purposes. They concluded the answer with the question 'How would our audience be aware of our print edition if they didn't see it online?'