Publishers of contemporary magazines invest more and more money in developing innovative design for an increasingly design-literate reader. Innovation, however, must always be grounded in the underlying conventions of legibility to ensure loyal readership and economic success.

Digital Magazine Design provides detailed descriptions of all the necessary rules of design, and uses these rules to cast a critical eye over a selection of contemporary high-street magazines.

The second part of this volume, written by publishing students, demonstrates how the tools of design can be applied to the analysis and practice of contemporary magazine design.

Through an understanding of the relationship between text, image and design, and the ability to make informed judgements, the student is able to critically evaluate all publishable material.

Most readers think of a written work as producing its meaning through the words it contains. But what is the significance of the detailed and beautiful illuminations on a medieval manuscript? Of the deliberately chosen typefaces in a book of poems by Yeats? Of the design and layout of text in an electronic format? How does the material form of a work shape its understanding in a particular historical moment, in a particular culture?
The material features of texts as physical artifacts--their "bibliographic codes" --have over the last decade excited increasing interest in a variety of disciplines. The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture gathers essays by an extraordinarily distinguished group of scholars to offer the most comprehensive examination of these issues yet, drawing on examples from literature, history, the fine arts, and philosophy.
Fittingly, the volume contains over two dozen illustrations that display the iconic features of the works analyzed--from Alfred the Great's Boethius through medieval manuscripts to the philosophy of C. S. Peirce and the dustjackets on works by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Styron.
The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture will be groundbreaking reading for scholars in a wide range of fields.
George Bornstein is C. A. Patrides Professor of English, University of Michigan. Theresa Tinkle is Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan.