Magazine Inspiration

Brittney and I have found several publications from which we want to use as inspiration for the aesthetic of our magazine. The first publication is the Harvard Business School marketing booklet. It isn't very visible in the following picture, but the title "The World's Thinking" is raised, and has a vellum behind the cut-out portion of text. Clearly, we will not be able to use such an expensive design in our project; however, it is a modern style that has caught our eye. Inside the booklet, the designers have used crisp icons to illustrate their message.Another marketing material that caught our eye was that of Bloomberg's entry-level career pamphlet. The use of vibrant colours and Polaroid pictures make this pamphlet stand out and appeal to college-aged students.

The final form of inspiration for our magazine's aesthetic is the Boston College Business School booklet. This booklet takes a very simple and uncluttered design approach. The photographs in this booklet are striking and vivid in colour, catching the reader's attention easily.

Quantitative Magazine Analysis

Yesterday, Brittney and I evaluated seven magazines similar in genre to the one we are creating on a number of criteria. The magazines that we looked at ranged in content from graduate school admissions to careers.

We went through each magazine and determined the page count, quantity and types of advertisements, quantity and types of articles, as well as a number of aesthetic indicators. We have created ratios for each magazine (e.g. number of advertisements per pages), which we will be using to guide the creation of our own magazine on MBA admissions.

A particularly interesting advertisement was found in the Job Choices 2010 magazine for Philip Morris, which was trying to promote careers for recent college graduates at its range of cigarette brands.