Response: History Presentation

For our magazine history presentations this week, I chose to critique Good Housekeeping in the 60s. I chose this magazine because I've been doing research on how to handle recipes and food articles for my Better Cook prototypes. I found lots of interesting stuff. I don't read Good Housekeeping very much right now, but I found it interesting comparing it to how magazines with recipes work now. Magazines with recipes now tend to have quite a bit of design elements... little measuring cups to determine cooking measurements, little clocks to determine how long it takes to make, etc. I found that not only the recipe slides were text heavy, but the stories in general were as well.

What I love most about the research I did was the covers (probably because covers are my favorite part of magazines!) I found myself sitting in the stacks for quite a while flipping through the collections admiring all the covers. What I found particularly interesting was that the art director was there from 1960-1969 and the masthead changed 3 different times.

The changes were even pretty drastic, going from big, block "G" and "H" to a serif font to a sans serif font. It's interesting even comparing sell lines from issue to issue, not staying very consistent. Magazines now are usually so formatted with how they handle sell lines.

Although presentations aren't quite a designers best friend, I enjoyed doing this project. I didn't realize so many magazines were so easily accessible right there at the library. They might be located in the scariest part of the library but definitely worth using as a resource in the future!