These are some spreads from an issue of Audi magazine that I own and have scanned in to analyse. I picked out the articles I found particularly interesting or that I thought were relevant to my project.
These pages have a similar simplistic style as 'Car'. I really like the bold imagery and these spreads are printed in gloss which makes the colours look really vibrant. The magazine as a whole has a feel of high quality which is reflected in the style of photography and layout they use. Audi magazine makes use of white space and doesn't create layouts that are cluttered, rather the opposite.
Audi magazine only features san-serif typefaces. Interestingly they use a variety of different typefaces for different parts of the article. e.g. - the header, which appears to be a condensed version of the main body typeface, differs from the introduction, which is all uppercase and in italics. The quotes and introductions they use are also in a light grey rather than the black that is used for the header and main article. Surprisingly I think they actually work well together even though inconsistencies usually look out of place. The style of typeface seems to match the Audi brand and it sits well next to the images of their cars.
Clearly Audi magazine is marketed at existing or potential Audi customers. Audi markets it's cars as being high performance, luxurious and quality products. This magazine reflects those aspirations as the mixture of gloss and matt finishes project an air of quality about the magazine. The shots they use of their cars are impressive and are clearly designed to sell the cars in their best light, thus it could be said that this magazine is more of a marketing tool for the company rather than a critical consumer based car mag.
There is also a strong focus on the journeys that lead to the creation of their cars and a lot of their articles use imagery to suggest a 'feel' about their cars, much like advertising posters. Whether it be placing their cars in certain situations which suggests the type of scene they want their cars to be associated with, or by including shots of impressive or thought provoking imagery, without the cars, which suggests a mood or feeling around the design of the car being linked with the product itself (or just the brand as a whole).
At the back of the magazine is the 'Technik' section which unlike the rest of the magazine features articles that detail lots of fact and consumer based information about their cars like price, availability, mpg etc. These spreads also feature diagrams, fact boxes and infographics. As the title of the section suggests this is a more technical detailing of their products.
What's interesting is the way they've designed this section. It's styled like the rough notes from a notepad or blueprints. The colour scheme is limited to black, the creamy colour of the paper and red, and the images are all black and white. Furthermore for this section they've used paper with less weight and that has a slightly rougher texture to it, similar to say newspaper. All these design choices create an eye-catching and unique looking article which clearly communicates a different purpose than the rest of the magazine.
The design follows the theme of tech specs and information so that all the elements (the articles, the diagrams, and the imagery) work well together and maintain consistency in the design. I also feel that the eye-catching design of these pages helps make potentially dull information more interesting to read. The infographics they've included definitely make some of the data more interesting to me as a reader, as there is alot of it. I particularly like the use of red to highlight certain blocks of information. It adds some life to the design in a simple way and breaks up the busy layout of text, images and diagrams.
Overall I really like Audi magazine. It's a professional well thought out piece of design that looks and feels like a quality product, and I think these factors really help Audi to maintain their brand and sell their cars in a similar light. It also has some creative flare which makes for some really interesting spreads. This magazine has given me lots of inspiration for designing my spread about cars as well as helping me understand how cars are displayed and reviewed in these types of magazines. There's quite a few design techniques I have found whilst analyzing this publication that I will be considering at the design stage of my own.
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