Cosmopolitan UK Magazine Research: History

COSMO is owned by hearst

Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s. Also known as Cosmo, its content as of 2011 included articles on relationships and how to have proper sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, as well as fashion and beauty. Published byHearst Magazines, Cosmopolitan has 63 international editions, is printed in 32 languages and is distributed in more than 100 countries.

The UK edition of Cosmopolitan, which began in 1972, was well known for sexual explicitness, with strong sexual language, male nudity and coverage of such subjects as rape. In 1999 CosmoGIRL!, a spinoff magazine targeting a teenage female audience, was created for international readership, but closed in December 2008.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/19/interview-louise-court-editor-cosmopolitan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/2012/mar/01/cosmopolitan-magazine-at-40?INTCMP=SRCH

Possible Useful Links for Research...

Here are some links I will be looking at in the future, based on the themes of gender, feminism and magazines.

http://feminismandgraphicdesign.blogspot.co.uk/

http://grad2008.ecuad.ca/communication_design/jennifer_ewing/

http://www.aiga.org/medalist-sheilalevrantdebretteville/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Levrant_de_Bretteville

http://l-whitaker1013-cts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/task-5-gaze.html

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/29/hall-of-femmes/

http://www.thefword.org.uk

http://pinkstinks.co.uk

http://www.wrc.org.uk

http://www.womankind.org.uk

http://www.rosauk.org

http://object.org.uk

http://fawcettsociety.org.uk

My initial ideas and thoughts:

- Cosmopolitan has a feminism campaign yet includes articles such as how to please your man

- Corruption of 'feminism' to sell magazines and to appeal to women - what does it actually mean

- Cosmo is owned by Hearst Magazines UK, which is run by a man, and also owns other women's magazines

- Critique the term 'feminism' in relation to graphic design targeted at women

- Is Cosmopolitan's feminism campaign misleading?

- When Cosmopolitan was launched it was needed and revolutionary, but now its taking a step backwards and about getting a boyfriend and being 'sexy'

- Research Cosmo, find headlines

- Also cosmo girl and cosmo on campus magazines to consider

- Can graphic design targeted at women be feminist?

- Can women's fashion magazines be considered feminist?

- Design activism - cosmo seeks to positively change the portrayal of women

- Look at audience theory - how the message depends on the viewer

- Consumption controls the masses - we consume because of articles lowering our self-esteem

Dissertation Categories... Seminars

Dissertation

- Needs to be 8,000 words generally with 4 chapters, each 1,500 each, plus introduction and conclusion. Go for 4 different angles on the topic, and highlight these in your proposal

- Need a methodology, can blend more than one methodology (such as feminism)

- Primary research - interviews, designers, texts/things that you are analysing, experiment to gain answers (Evidence gained through observations), study archives

- Secondary research - books, films etc.

• Start a literature search when decided on topic
• Questionnaires need to be sent to mass groups, of different ages/backgrounds, and the questions need to be not directed to get fair accurate results

Here are my notes from the seminars that I attended, giving me new things to consider and research to help me set my proposal up.

Design and Social Change

- Look at Laura Mulvey

- Design activism - wanting to change something political

- L. Baldwin 'visual communication from theory to practice'

• Act of branding always supports one side of society as it supports consumerism. There are issues behind every act of design
• Relations of production - the methodology is ‘dialectal materialism’ 
• Society is composed on base and superstructure (base = forces of production, economic reality, balance of power)
• All ideologies are produced and relate to the balance of power of the base
• Dominance of one group in society over another, e.g. men largely have control over mass media in patriarchal society, so the things produced reflect mens control. e.g. page 3 models in paper, the way women are portrayed in films. As these things are produced over and over again they seem to become acceptable
• All design makes a choice to disrupt or go with the base and superstructure cycle
• Social change disrupts the cycle
• Ideology (find a critical definition)
• A personal political ideology
• A system of believes that becomes dominant, produced by the dominant class, then cements itself as the culture of everyone, even though its not. (look at false consciousness - marxist theory)
• N. Klein ‘No Logo’ - summary of USA consumption.
• We are the 99%, reminds people of their position in the base
• Adbusters - culture jammers - intervening cycle
• Think about the society that produces a design you are looking at, understand the dominant ideologies and its aim. Who is the audience? Design for the masses or a niche? Look into audience theory genre.
• Consider the historical context of period, what are the dominant ideologies of the time, and look into communication theory
• Subculture (oppressed) / culture (dominant forces) - what are the differences?
• Victor Papanek - Design for the real world
• Social tithe - designers should spend 10% of their time working on saving the world somehow through design
• Our advertising culture emerges from already exploitative society
• Pick a designer, use them as a case to ask lots of questions through

Design and Accessibility

• Negotiation of meaning between designer and audience
• How the designer considers the audience when designing and do the audience understand what is being communicated?
• The linear model is one way A->B
• Shannon & Weaver - information source goes to encoder which goes to channel -> decoder -> destination
• Communication goes two ways and there is a social context to communication, A->B->A->B - this is semiotics
• Communication is dependent on political social context, needs scope for feedback, the role of the audience is the creator of meaning
• Audience theory - the message thats decoded depends on gender, age, background of audience
• Designers tend to think of audience as a mass, where audience theory seeks to differ this
• There are different categories for marketing to audiences - supposed to talk to them in different ways, but all categories are problematic
• Social context creates communication
• Frankfurt school (Adorno) - reduces society to 1 mass of people without difference - the effects model. The hypodermic syringe injects mass audience with the same ideas
• People have different readings of TV shows etc..
• Reception theory shows how meaning is created at the point of reception by the individual
• David Morley [1980] Preferred reading is if you adhere to the dominant message that the advertiser wanted you to, e.g. you a see a product and want it, and believe in it because of an advert
• Oppositional vs negotiated
• Uses and gratifications model - extension on reception theory - people use media for own ends
• Complexity of communication
• The death of the author / creator of meaning / birth of the reader
• Research media studies texts
• Bauhaus wanted to create design for everyone
• Modernism - equal, universal design language regardless of culture, gender, etc, however, now a step backwards with postmodernism

Design and Consumerism

• Brand theory - critical texts around how brands operate
• Anti-capitalist movement - negative view of consumerism: occupy movement
• How does an exploitive advert work? Communication theory.
• How is a super brand constructed? How is the idea of it communicated?
• Anti branding theory - Wally Ollins - Naomi Klein - how brands work from a political viewpoint
• Adam Curtins 'Century of the self' documentary - Marx and Freud
• Development of Western Consumerism. Belief you can achieve satisfaction through consumption
• Bernays - founder of PR
• Consumption controls the masses
• Conspicuous consumption
• T. Veblen - we buy to gain status
• Baudrillard - consumer culture - symbolic value of commodity
• Marx commodity concept
• Fetish commodities
• What is social context?
• Case study of popular brand?
• Ethical question: design as wage labourer
• Simmel - trickle down theory - upper classes buy high fashion to show status. Normal people aspire to have same status as elite. e.g. buying burberry. Then upper class move on to a new brand as they don't want to be associated.
• Trickle up effect - Nike mixing underclass fashion, such as from the Bronx, with clothes for middle class
• Consider celebrity endorsements

My Dissertation Ideas - (things I want to answer)

• The best graphic designers are seen to be men, find examples of women
• Do a survey to find others favourite female designers, as many can name lots of men but few women
• Make a document promoting female designers to link it in to DP
• Graphic design by women for women - what do women really want to see?
• What do men think that women want to see?
• Adverts that work the other way around, objectifying men, what do these achieve?
• How has the portrayal of women changed in recent years, is it better or worse?
• Relate back to the base and the superstructure
• 60’s and 70’s boom for feminism seems to have gone backwards
• Look into international women’s day, and magazines promoting and campaigning for female equality such as Stylist
• Need to chose an area of graphic design to focus an example on
• Look at designs aimed at both genders, design by men for women, and design by women for women
• Focus on a particular commodity or area of design
• Men and women want different things so adverts are targeted to them, e.g. mens moisturiser is given a different name to make it more appealing to men
• Does the capitalist society depend on women's insecurities which are shown through adverts designed by men?
• How does graphic design designed by men as compared to that designed by women make women consume products?

Dissertation Briefing

dissertation briefing

- level 6 dissertation board on moodle
- critical analysis of subject, choose a narrow topic so can do in depth research
- collect information relevant for that area of interest
- must be relevant to your work
- the things the markers are looking for are underlined on the brief on moodle
- need a breadth of sources, web, books, magazines, films, exhibitions, journals, people
- keep looking back over the brief to ensure doing what is needed
- look at presentations and documents on moodle
- google scholar
- write to companies who can send you information
- british library catalogue - can order books in advance
- individual proposal form on moodle, list the issues you want to address, how is it relevant to your practice
- proposal to be submitted before 7th June before 4pm

researching briefing

- library research contact chris.graham@leeds-art.ac.uk
- make sure research is focused and relevant, be aware of what you should discard if its irrelevant
- focus on a case study, defined topic
- look at bibliography hand out
- questionnaires - pilot it first, make sure it makes sense and people are answering properly, mix up the type of questions, time limit for the return
- arrange an interview, give them advance warnings of the type of question you will ask
- case studies, site visits
- literature search - academic books, journals, websites, blogs, online forums, videos, dvds, CDs, TV / radio, newspapers / reports, printed ephemera
- know where to look for effective research, think of keywords/related terms you can look for to narrow/broaden search terms
- look at contents page of book and index
- read the introduction or abstract
- use a books own bibliography to inform further reading
- LCA library book search http://library.leeds-art.ac.uk
- LeedsMet library www.leedsmet.ac.uk/lis
- University of Leeds (sconul) - a card you can use in any uni library www.leeds.ac.uk/library
- The British Library in Boston Spa www.bl.uk
- COPAC http://copac.ac.uk - all uni librarys in UK combined catalogues
- when searching put speech marks around so specific search
- journal search - InftoTrac http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/leedscad - a store of online magazine articles
password: tryinfomarks
- JSTOR - http://www.jstor.org. - only available on college computers
- internet search - Athens - http://www.athens.ac.uk  - need to access librarian for login and password - internet catalogues
- WGSN - database of fashion information and trends - www.wgsn.com - leedscollege wgsn13

Dissertation Categories

I have been re-thinking my ideas for my dissertation as it needs to be interlinked with my design work and my PPD. I can sign up for three of the seminars, relating to my initial idea to help me finalise the area I will chose to write 8000 words about. Then over summer I can gather my research and write my proposal.

Design and Social Change
- Designers who are concerned about how graphics effects change, ethical, political...

Design for Accessibility
- Functionality, communication theory, e.g. signage, working for all cultures, disabilities... audience driven design

Design for Sustainability
- How can you be sustainable as a graphic design? What does sustainability mean? How can you create designs that last? Design is needed for charity events but with it comes an ethical dilemma.

Design for Consumerism
- Branding and identity, how you communicate with consumers, ethical concerns

Design in the Future
- Technology driven design

Design Form and Function
- How this relationship has impacted design

Globalisation and International Perspective
- How this effects your practice

Initial Ideas

I'm going to go to the design for social change, design for accessibility and design for consumerism seminars, as I think these are the ones that will link in with the subject of gender, which is what I am most interested in. My initial ideas are:

- Does graphic design aimed at men work for women?
- How do companies communicate with women to feed consumerism from their own lack of self esteem?
- Can graphic design make the world a better place for women when so many examples objectify women, and make a profit from their vulnerabilities? [argue for and against, e.g. yes - powerful communications fighting for change, or no - it is a capitalist society, run by men for men with only the intentions of making a profit]

After the seminars, hopefully I'll have some points to start researching from so I can decide on a dissertation topic.