Design for Media

A Handbook for Students and Professionals in Journalism, PR, and Advertising

Di Hand, Steve Middleditch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781405873666
• eBook ISBN: 9781317864011
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This essential guide provides you with a tailored introduction to the design techniques and production practices employed in the media industry. It presents clear and relevant explanations of how to design and produce any type of print and online publication to a professional standard, from pre-planning through to going to press or online. In providing the context, principles and thinking behind design over time, alongside the key practical techniques and know-how, this resource will enable you to present information clearly and effectively.

Key features:

• Provides a complete resource, explaining the background, theory and application of design as well as the 'how to'
• Tutorials and exercises demonstrate how to create clean, attractive and well-targeted designs
• Supported by a comprehensive gallery of examples and case studies
• Highly illustrated throughout
• Colour 'How to' sections explain in detail how to create layouts and work with type, pictures and colour successfully

Design for Media is a core resource for students and professionals in journalism, PR, advertising, design and across the media and creative sectors.

1	THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLISHING MEDIA

This chapter discusses:

■ Media proliferation

■ The twentieth-century press barons

■ Design in the golden age

■ The influence of magazine design on newspapers

■ Directing design

■ The evolution of modern magazine design

■ Media diversification

■ Advertising and revenue generation

■ Media transitions

■ Creative directors and digital media agencies

■ Media groups

This chapter will provide you with an introduction to the development of the modern media industry. It describes the influence of the press and the role of individual newspaper proprietors during the twentieth century and how design has become a key element in the success of media products. It examines the symbiotic relationship between editorial and advertising, as well as the key developments in technology that have led to the current trend for multimedia, convergent titles. Background knowledge of how the media industry has been consolidated into large groups and organisations that produce and distribute multi-platform media will help you understand the media areas and work practices you may encounter during your career.

‘The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.’

Marshall McLuhan, author and philosopher

‘Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era – it’s a process that creates order out of chaos, that renders technology usable to business. Design means being good, not just looking good.’

Clement Mok, designer and digital pioneer

The media industry

From Gutenberg in the fifteenth century to websites in the twenty-first century, the key to successful media has been the union between technology, communication, education and visual presentation. Most modern media have their origins in the nineteenth century, when the combination of wealth generated by industrialisation, coupled with the introduction of compulsory education, created a mass market for newspapers and magazines. The journey from the era of print to the digital age has taken over two centuries, through years that have seen, and are still seeing, great historical upheavals and many profound social changes. The period has also included great scientific advances and the development of technologies that were once regarded as radical and groundbreaking, only to be supplanted by further innovations. Print, cinema, radio and television all, at one time, commanded the mass audience that has now switched to the Internet.

Design has always been at the centre of media development, and when it is combined with financial acumen, clever technology and the right moment in history, the visual style of a title can come to embody an era – and make a fortune for its producer. This has come from taking an approach to design that does not just regard it as making things look nice, but as a fundamental aspect of how the media industry unites technology and functionality with art and literature. All design must function in the context for which it has been created, and it is known that well-designed titles present content in the best possible manner to attract readers, viewers, visitors and advertisers. Understanding how the publishing industry has evolved will help you to gain an insight into the structure of the industry and the application of media design.

Media proliferation

Britain, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, built one of the largest and richest empires the world has ever seen, controlling, at its height, almost a quarter of the globe and a quarter of the world’s population. Victorian and Edwardian newspapers and magazines had an enormous readership and were widely distributed throughout the UK via the newly constructed railway network, as well as being dispatched to distant parts of the British Empire. The average Briton at this time would have had many sources of information, from local papers run by an editor–proprietor to nationally distributed titles with print runs in the hundreds of thousands. The growth in newspaper and magazine publishing carried on from the mid nineteenth century to the 1920s, and the period has become known as the golden age of print.

The key developments in mechanical printing 1790–1950

1790–1838	1840–1879	1880–1949
1798 Lithography Invented by Alois Senefelder 1804 Iron printing press Invented by Earl Stanhope 1810 Foundrinler papermaking machine Invented by Nicolas Robert 1810 Steam-driven printing press Invented by Friedrich Koenig 1835 The rotary web press Invented by Rowland Hill 1837 Chromolithography Invented by Engelmann and Lasteyrie 1837 First photographic Image Taken by Joseph Niepce 1837 First electric printing press Invented by Thomas Davenport 1839 First photographic printing process Invented by Louis Daguerre	1847 Rotary drun printing Invented by Richard Hoe 1853 Negative/positive photography Invented by William Fox Talbot 1860 Commercial line block process Invented by Paul Pretsch 1860 First rotary offset litho machine Invented by William Bullock and John Walters 1860 Colour separation Developed by James Clerk Maxwell 1861 First colour photograph Taken by James Clerk Maxwell 1879 Uthographlc mechanical tints Invented by Benjamin Day	1881 Trichromatic halftone process Invented by Frederick Ives 1886 Linotype typesetting machine Invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler 1886 Point measurement system Based on a unit of 1/72in (0.3527mm) 1886 Halftone engraving process Developed by Frederick Ives 1887 Monotype typesetting machine Invented by Tolbert Lanston 1890 Rotary lithographic press Developed by Hippolyte Marinoni 1904 Three-cylinder litho offset press Developed by Ira Rubel 1948 Colour flatbed scanner Invented by Hardy and Wurzburg 1949 Type photosetting Developed by Rene Higonnet and Louis Moyroud

Prior to the introduction of radio and ci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• 1 The evolution of publishing media
• 2 Twenty-first century media: design in practice
• 3 Cross-media production: print and web publishing
• 4 Pre-planning a publication and website
• 5 Information design
• 6 Content visualisation and structure (1): type
• 7 Content visualisation and structure (2): pictures
• 8 Content visualisation and structure (3): colour
• 9 Building a print or web page
• 10 Going to press – publishing on the Web
• Conclusion
• Contacts and resources
• Glossary
• Bibliography and recommended study
• Recommended reading and viewing
• Index