Two
issues, seventeen years apart, of what was the best-selling film fan magazine
in Britain. Originally it was monthly started
in 1913 and changed to a weekly in the twenties and finally gave up in
1960. The editorial was entirely based
on promoting the latest films and the stars though in the late fifties it was forced
to take account of the new medium: television.
The format in these issues hasn’t changed much over the years and there was a non-existent art budget because all the photos were free PR handouts. The down-market busy page look was created using newspaper techniques of hand-lettered headlines, cut-outs, boxes, tone-panels, irregular shaped color panels and typographic style of serif and sans faces, drop caps, blobs, stars, and copy in various line lengths, crossheads and more.
Strangely, ragged right is nowhere to be seen in either issue. An essential feature for this sort of fan publication was the whole page star portraits (the cut out and keep style) and two appear in the 1938 copy but oddly none in the 1955 one.
The format in these issues hasn’t changed much over the years and there was a non-existent art budget because all the photos were free PR handouts. The down-market busy page look was created using newspaper techniques of hand-lettered headlines, cut-outs, boxes, tone-panels, irregular shaped color panels and typographic style of serif and sans faces, drop caps, blobs, stars, and copy in various line lengths, crossheads and more.
Strangely, ragged right is nowhere to be seen in either issue. An essential feature for this sort of fan publication was the whole page star portraits (the cut out and keep style) and two appear in the 1938 copy but oddly none in the 1955 one.
This is cool!
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