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Today we will be talking about house style. This blog will be the first of a three part series. This blog will explain House Style in general.
House style is an element that is used all throughout magazines to create a trend. This helps give the magazine familiarity with its audience along with creating its brand to to give it credibility and allow it to be recognizable. It’s a very useful element which creates and assigns an identity to its magazine.
Things such as the masthead, font, color, picture proportions, placements, subheading, barcode, date, grammar, jargon, etc. These things can help establish a magazines house style.
The masthead is the first thing the readers read on a magazine. This can also be viewed as the title or the brand of the magazine. Either way, the way the masthead is placed on the magazine, it’s position/placement, color, size, all of this will begin the brand for its magazine and will make its identity recognizable to its audience.
The font and its size can say a lot about the type of magazine and how the audience reads the magazine. For example, if the font throughout the magazine was a playful, bubbly font( shown below), it would be viewed as a kiddy magazine or maybe a baking magazine. On the other hand, if the magazine is presented with a professional and clean type of font, it’s audience would be given the impression of the magazine being about business or politics. Therefore, house style is an important element to use to set a magazines style to make it recognizable to its audience.
The color is what most attracts the eye of the reader. Colors can have significant meanings and can provoke specific emotions. It can attract a specific audience with its bright colors such as kids, young adults or it can attract adults with more serious colors such as black or grey. The color doesn’t even have to be specific to a certain age or gender, that is why color is so important, it has a broad range to attract a larger audience.
The picture proportions/ placements contribute to the main idea of the magazine, or the main subject. Depending where the picture is, how big, etc., this would play a big role in creating the identity of the magazine. For example, if the picture takes up the whole cover, behind the masthead, subheadings, etc., this would become its trademark. Therefore, when a reader sees this cover, they would immediately recognize it from the picture taking up the whole page. Usually fashion magazines cover the whole page with its cover picture, behind the masthead, subheadings, magazine kicker, date, barcode, etc. This is one of the ways magazines like VOUGE, a fashion magazine, is recognized by its audience.
The grammar and jargon used in a magazine is crucial to identifying its target audience. For example, if a magazine is meant for kids, the grammar and jargon used would be modern and high frequency. On the other hand, if a magazine was meant for business and economic interests, there would be low frequency words and the jargon would be understand only by people who know business and economic terms.
The barcode and date placement can also establish a magazines house style. For example, on Entertainment Weekly, it’s barcode is on the plastic covering, not on the magazine itself. It’s buyers would already know this as it is different from other magazines and it is known to have it so it’s buyers will look for it in its plastic covering.
Overall, the house style is a very important element for a magazine. Not only to keep its consistent but also to build a brand and make it recognizable to its buyers.
Sources for research:
https://www.thoughtco.com/house-style-editing-1690842
https://prezi.com/6jf-wzz5up2u/magazine-house-style/
That’s all for today!
Now for Pt.2!
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