Cosmopolitan Month by Month View - Dec 12

Can women’s magazines, focusing on the case study of Cosmopolitan (UK edition), ever be considered feminist?

December 2012 - Cover Stars - One Direction (First all male cover/boyband)

284 pgs of which 81 are fashion/beauty/make-up adverts, = 29%

For

100% Confident - Regular Feature (pg32)

- This feature often includes inspirational quotes from famous female celebrities which encourage the readers to be confident women.

- This promotes women as living up to the tagline of the magazine, which is 'For For Fearless Females'

- "If anyone tells me I can't eat, then I'm going to tell them to you-know-what themselves." Lea Michele

Alpha Female - Regular Feature (pg32)

- This feature often includes advice from a successful working female about the industry they work in 

- This advice encourages the readers to focus on their career choices 

Ultimate Women Awards (throughout)

- Every year Cosmopolitan holds the Ultimate Women Awards, celebrating celebrities and real women who have done something inspiring

- Winners include campaigners, fundraisers, athletes and women who have overcome huge challenges in their life to achieve their goals

- However, celebrities from reality shows such as the Kardashians who have done nothing to deserve being called inspiring compared to some of the real women included in the awards, detract meaning from these awards. This shows a magazine which is obsessed with celebrity culture, making it seem as if a celebrity status is more important than hard work and talent.

Women Who are Prepared for Anything (pg 139)

- This article is about women being smart and prepared for any eventually in life by saving up money for themselves and having a back up plan in terms of having a baby. It features real life examples and it shows that women do not have to rely on men in life to survive.

Cash & Careers Clinic - Regular Feature - (pg 143)

- This regular feature helps women with a different topic regarding their work every issue, inspiring women to focus on their careers.

- Gives women reassurance, tips, and real life examples of certain situations. Can help to build women's confidence in work, an topic that other magazines may not touch on.

- This example is about achieving a lot in your career in a small amount of time

my job 147

Catwalk to Curvy - Regular Feature (pg 197)

- This regular feature shows how women with curvy bodies can still wear the catwalk trends

- This feature shows the readers that any size body can be beautiful

- However this feature only takes up 1 page of the whole magazine, there should be more pages focusing on the bodies of curvy girls rather than the pages full of thin models

So How Do You Fancy An Hour-Long Orgasm? (pg 246- 250)

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Against

Sexy, Confident and Smart - Regular Feature - (pg 29)

- This page features the inspirational quotes, ‘Live big and go for it!’ and “Sexy, confident and smart... That’s you’. However, these two quotes are without fail placed next to a photograph of a scantily clad female, moving the focus of the reader from the text on to the image, enforcing the gaze to be on the female, so that the magazine tries to reiterate the idea that a high achieving women is a good looking one. Being ‘sexy’ could be a quality given to a women to refer to any of her characteristics, but the use of the female gaze shows that here, sexiness is about flaunting your body for the viewer to see.

Men on 34

Men vs. Fashion - Regular Feature - (pg 39)

- This is a regular feature where three men rate what they think about what four female celebrities are wearing, also featuring the Cosmo fashion verdict, which can be quite different from what the men think

- The article does state, "we don't dress for men, but we're often curious about their fashion sense."

- However this article still suggests that we should consider what men would think of our outfits and what is 'fashionable', rather than wearing what we want to, and what we feel comfortable in

- The article also is an example of the magazines fixation with celebrity culture and body image

- The celebrities are often criticised for making bold moves or wearing unusual fashion choices, giving the reader the idea that we should all be dressed the same to be considered fashionable

Never Be Tagged in the Same Look Twice - Regular Feature (pg 50)

- This fashion feature suggests we should be obsessed with what we wear, and that it is a bad thing to wear the same outfit twice.

- It suggests we will be judged on Facebook by the outfits that we are wearing, rather than opinions shared.

- This encourages women to splurge on new clothes, causing unnecessary worry

Party Queen (pg 204)

- This article is part of the beauty pages, but suggests that the reason for wanting to look good for a party is to seduce men. Women should want to dress up because they find it fun, not to please men, so this is a message Cosmo should not be sending out.

(pg210)

- This is another example from the article, telling readers how to apply to their make-up to make themselves a man magnet, as if this should be their priority on a night out.

(pg212)

- Another example from the article, describing what products women should include in their clutch bags is a rollerball fragrance because: 'Men can't resist its vanilla notes!' 

- Women should choose fragrances because they like them not because they think it is a fragrance men will find appealing. This is another example of Cosmo telling women what to do to please men rather than doing what they want for themselves.

Body News 26

The Cocktail Swap (pg 263)

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Loverdose Effect Insert Advert

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Deconstruction

The implications of deconstruction for thinking about text

Lecture Notes

• Deconstrucion is complicating what seems to be obvious. It is a style of writing that you can never understand. It is an invented philosophy, which became like a 'style', that overlaps with traits of postmodernism graphics. The work of this style shouldn't be grouped together as an ism - as it is wrongly known as 'deconstructionism'. 
• The Cranbook Academy of Art was a deconstructivist school which played with the rules of Graphic Design.
• 'Deconstruction is an approach to texts which analyses their systems of representation - the systems which frame their communication' (Jacques Derrida I) Text refers to anything that gives meaning.
• By questioning and interrogating you can unpick hidden structures that lie beneath the surface.
• There was a traditional idea that speech was the primary method of communication as it is original, natural, internal, authentic and powerful. Writing was seen a secondary copy of speech, and therefore, deemed inferior. This is because is requires equipment, and the subject is absent. However, writing can last forever, whereas speech can't. Derrida deconstructs this idea that speech is better than writing.
• When reading a text, you are reading the authors opinions, but with decisions from the designers getting in the way. There is more than one voice in a book, and the decisions behind why a certain font, why a certain kerning or leading has been used is communicated.
• The way a designer sets out a page can stop you from reading everything, as they almost read it for you, indenting new paragraphs, separating different points, making it easy to skim through.
• Designers add a voice which can become more important than what is written / readers voice. This is the death of the idea of the author being the only one who gives meaning.
• Katherine McCoys book page (Cranbook Acadamey) is an example of deconstruction text. Opposites, such as art and science, are placed in between lines of text, so the reader has to read two things simultaneously. There is a split down the middle of the page, yet the text reads like a standard page, not in columns. You have to read it in a different way than to what the brain has been taught. This awakes the reader and makes them really pay attention.
• The Cranbook Academy Journal makes you aware of the structure it deconstructs, as it takes standard accepted forms of journals and slowly changes them.
• Deconstruction posters can attack conventions, by not following the rules of graphic design, but by giving the reader the power, by having no headings, no grid, removing structures and therefore allowing the reader to choose their own meaning to this style of poster.
• Barry Deck's 'Template Gothic' is a font that deconstructs itself, as some letters are slanted and uneven. As the geometry is destroyed, when using this font for writing paragraphs, the text looks wobbly.
• The unusual layout of David Carson's 'Ray Gun' deconstructs what is is to be a magazine. The pages of this magazine seem to be against communication, with anti-meaning.
• In a critique of David Carson's work, the designer has used techniques of Carson's, which really makes you think why has he made this decision to do this and what does it mean?
• Deconstruction architecture challenges what a modern building should be because we assume certain forms. (Peter Eisenman - Tokyo office block)
• Bernard Tschumi's Le Parc de la Villette Paris is not like a standard park with a path that leads you a certain way around, but is confusing, like a maze, making the visitor have to think for themselves. This shows how deconstruction architecture can be anti-authority.
• Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin has no straight walls, and is a building that dismantles itself.
• Typographers can change the message as much meaning is created by us as with the text.
• Books used to be handwritten so every copy was slightly different. Typography standardised books so there is only one meaning.
• The kerning and leading affects the meaning of how a sentence is read. The font choice changes what is being communicated.
• Beatrice Warde 'The Crystal Goblet' thinks that type should be invisible as the authors words are the most important.
• Example: The Sex Pistols album artwork is against order, as it goes against what the rules of good typography are. It is modern, but anti-aesthetic. It seeks to critique the modern world in a political way.

Task

Summarise the main points of the text about typography and the role of typography in communication, then analyse one piece of deconstructionist graphic design.

 Text from Lupton, E (2008) 'Thinking with Type'

• Typography helps readers to avoid reading by allowing them to skim through and skip parts of the text to find just what they are looking for. Paragraphs, marked by indents, make it clear that a new idea has begun.
• Before print, books were handwritten, and there were errors in each copy, but now there is only one form of the text. However, if a book was to be translated or revised etc, it would change. Online texts are easily downloadable, allowing the reader to change them.
• As the alphabet represents sounds, spacing and punctuation is vital for the text to be read as speech.
• Books have navigational features, such as page numbers and headings, so a reader knows their location. This is useful so the reader can leave the text and return to it. This is seen as an "attack on linearity", which may be celebrated, however, electronic screens are usually linear. 
• The reader can create meaning as much as the writer. (Barthes theory of death of the author). This is because the content of the text changes when the physical representation of the text is altered, giving the power to the designer.
• Readers on the web are impatient. This arises from culture, as people have different expectations of the text they will find on a website compared to in print. Therefore people pay more attention to print, even though it is as easy to read.

David Carson (Year of article unknown), Ray Gun - Double page spread

http://theslick.jugem.jp/?eid=69

This double page spread from David Carson's magazine about style and music, Ray Gun, is an example of famous deconstructionist graphic design. There are so many layers to this spread, containing many different fonts, colours and images that everything looks like a jumble, a random experiment which looks like a mistake, but at the same time, works, and therefore Carson's graphic design 'style' is still celebrated today. The text in the columns is so tiny, and there is so much going out, that the articles are almost impossible to read. The viewer could either choose to ignore this work, or decide to scrutinise it; either way this style of graphic design definitely provokes a reaction, with viewers either loving or hating Carson's work. As the style of graphic design is innovative and experimental, readers may be more likely to pick up this magazine, as it is interesting and evokes curiosity, than they would pick up an article which is just plain black text on white paper. The columns do not seem to fit into a neat grid as the columns on other magazines do. Carson seems to do the opposite to what the rules of graphic design are, yet he gets away with it, is even celebrated for this. By making decisions such as to have red text on a black background, allowing the colours to bleed into one another, or to have a mix of different type faces which do not seems to match, or the text that wanders off the page, Carson is going against the modern order of design. Although the text is almost illegible, the page does communicate to the reader, however, it is more about design, rather than the actual subject of the article. It suggests that the designers are more important than the authors, as they give a new meaning to the text. Carson even said that he believed 'if the type is invisible, so is your article'. This idea relates to Barthes theory of the 'Death of the author'. 

Extra Reading

Joe Clark (1995) 'Illegible David Carson cannot 'not' communicate'
http://joeclark.org/design/davidcarson.html

Lupton, E and Miller, A (1999) Design Writing Research 'Deconstruction and Graphic Design', 2nd Edition, New York: Phaidon