The Magazine as Medium: Design, Materiality, and the Relationship Between Text and Non-text in European Periodicals

5 – 6 October 2012

Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Marshall McLuhan famously argued that magazines and newspapers resemble mosaics: their unique amalgam of texts, images and advertising, elicit reader participation in ways no other printed matter can.  Almost fifty years after the publication of McLuhan’s classic study Understanding Media (1964), magazines have gone digital and increasingly rely on audio, video and interactive elements to channel their information. But what is the effect of their particular arrangement of materials? How do texts, images, design, typography and materiality interact?  This conference seeks to explore the relationship between textual and non-textual aspects of European periodicals. We welcome proposals for 15 to 20 minute talks on the above theme, both dealing with individual magazines and discussing wider trends. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Periodical design and typography
• Periodical materiality
• Interaction between text and design in periodicals
• The role of images in magazines
• Avant-garde and underground magazines
• Multimedia, loose leaf and unbound magazines
• The role of magazine advertising
• Non-textual elements in digital magazines