Huub Koch | Creating Good Vibrations

jan v. white

Jan V. White
Editing and design

During my studies at the Visual Communication department of the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam I was confronted with a giant lack of information about the gentle art of magazine design. It was in the public library that I digged up one example of Jan V. White’s Editing and design. This book became part of my personal research, a research I did during the holidays and days off. If you ever read this book you know it really triggers your basic designer instincts. A natural force that is categorised, analysed, simplified for practical reasons by Jan V. White.

The interesting of this book is that the imagery and the fonts used might seem very outdated, but this has no influence on its content. The content is concerned with an exhausting explanation of how magazines are made, how to use grids, columnsize, type, graphics, spreads, gutters, image, illustration and other secrets.

The greatest secret reveiled is the way readers actually experience magazines and pages as a whole. To make such understanding easy to implement all sorts of project management tools are given to be able to create magazines that have rhythm, use contrast, have identity and authenticity, look pretty, are interesting and above informative. Such magazines leave room for advertising, create a bond between publisher and reader and are innovative and clearly themselves all the time.

How to do this? Well, … the designer has to take into account and learn how to make the story get off the page and jump in the readers mind as an unforgettable impression. Want to know more? Just read Jan V. White’s editing and design, if you can get a copy.

[Allworth recently made a reprint of Editing and Design! So if you want the book it's back again!]