A few basics
This set of blogs is to introduce us to the reason for and impact of promotion and graphic design within the fashion industry and related creative industries.
Discussion
We discussed Vogue from the point of view of ADVERTISING
If you were to buy a softback book of the quality and extent (number of pages) of vogue, on similar stock (paper type) and printed so professionally, it would cost in excess of £50.
Vogue can keep the cost of Vogue to £5 because of the huge charges made to high profile advertisers – Chanel, Burberry, Dior, Versace etc.
Covers
In the recent BBC programme about the 100 anniversary of Vogue, Alexandra Schulman over-ruled the chief designer’s choice of cover to go with a conventional head and shoulders shot of Kate Moss rather than a more ‘arty’ version that showed Moss in a casual pose.
Why?
Vogue relies on sales. The greater the sales, the more chance they have of retaining high paying advertisers – who in effect pay for the magazine.
Sales could drop if the audience feels the cover looks either avant-garde, down-market or unusual – if sales drop or the cover is featured as ‘unusual’ in social media – advertisers might drop out or re-negotiate their fees – disastrous, darling!
Who buys Vogue?
These are the stats: from: https://www.condenast.ru/en/portfolio/magazines/vogue/circulation/
GENDER
Female — 82% Male — 18%
AGE
16-24 years — 36%
25-34 years — 32%
35-44 years — 20%
45+ years — 13%
BACKGROUND
Higher education – 54%
Working – 63%
Business owners, managers, specialists, white-collars – 51%
High income and above average – 75%
67% enjoy looking at advertising in Vogue
64% trust advertising in Vogue
61% of readers bought goods advertised in Vogue
Typical Vogue spreads:
As with the cover Vogue spends a great deal of money on the photographers, models and styling of their imagery. But they tend to play fairly safe with subject matter and typographic layout. The styling will be opulent and extravagent – but never tacky. They will have ‘street’ photography – but the subjects will be top models. They may use unconventional typography at times but it will tend to be ornamental and elegant – as one would really expect from Vogue.
Who is the photographer in these layouts?
Nick Knight – a genius
What can you say?
Something for us to try! Photoshop and lots of paints!
We are so doing these:
Enough! I could carry on looking at his work forever!! So see the websites and have a really good look around:
http://showstudio.com/contributor/nick_knight
Back to a different sort of magazine design
iD
Who buys iD?
Gender
Male 37% Female 63%
Average Age 27.6
Under 21-25 21 8%
26-30 34%
31-35 24%
36-40 20%
41+ 14%
Audience Profile
30% Spend 3 hours online per day
61% have 500+ Facebook friends
51% visit the website more than 3 times a week
40% shop online every month
83% purchase clothing/accessories every month
52% own a video game console
83% eat out at least once a week
82% go to a bar or club at least once a week
£24,414 Average individual income
£49,637 Average household income
83% like to know about fashion brands/designers before everyone else
iD describe themselves:
‘We utilise our creative vision and talent to give the world the gift of eye-catching, mind-blowing, video-driven fashion content. Exploring everything from high-end couture to the myriad of underground fashion scenes all over the world’.
Discussion
We contrasted the two magazines.
In many cases the actual clothes, audience, models, advertisers and editorial material might overlap or even be the same. But Vogue has a bedrock of fairly conservative consumers who will tolerate a certain amount of edgy imagery and iD have a bedrock of highly open-minded consumers who will only accept edgy.
We then moved on to discuss fashion design groups who are creating work that will generally be showcased in magazines such as iD, DAZED and LOVE an issue before VOGUE or ELLE and several issues before less up-market publications such as GLAMOUR.
We discussed VETEMENTS
These websites explain the purpose and appeal of Vetements:
http://www.highsnobiety.com/2016/05/09/explaining-vetements/
This one questions the meaning of this type of fashion:
http://www.manrepeller.com/2016/03/confession-i-dont-get-vetements.html
These sites explain the phenomenon of the DHL T-shirt:
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/apr/19/dhl-t-shirt-vetements-fashion-paris-catwalk
http://www.viva.co.nz/article/fashion/demna-gvasalia-of-vetements-on-race-and-those-dhl-t-shirts/
Fashion Illustration
For this we looked at the work of Tobie Giddio
We then used the Image Trace feature of Illustrator to extract the black areas of his illustrations and added our own shapes and swirls using the pen tool, brushes and the transparency features – creating our own fashion illustrations.
Websites and Blogs
As potential fashion promoters it would be a good idea to set up a WIX website with a blog feature to showcase work and ideas.
Design Trends in Promotional Graphic Design
Individually we have looked at styles, methods and contemporary trends in magazine design, layout and graphics with quite a concentration on typography.
Here are some examples and names that could be – or may already have been used as inspiration.
Sites for more inspiration
http://www.itsnicethat.com/categories/graphic-design
http://designspiration.net/random/
http://formfiftyfive.com/tag/graphic-design/
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