Autocar Weekly

For some comparative research I decided to look at another car magazine I own, 'Autocar'. Autocar is a consumer based car magazine. It features extensive road tests of new cars primarily as well as news on upcoming models and general consumer advice.

This the standard layout Autocar uses for it's road tests. They use a set style and colour scheme for most of their road tests and usually feature the same things such as Pros and Cons, a fact file, a rating and a final verdict. What I noticed straightaway is that these spreads are quite busy in their design. Every space has some kind of information about the car in it. This makes sense as a magazine that focuses on consumer advice has to show that they are being thorough and critical with their testing, so a busy layout would suggest that they have packed out their article with as much information about the car that the consumer could possibly want.

This magazine is printed on paper that you would usually find in mass produced magazines. Quite thin paper makes up the bulk whilst the cover is printed on a slightly heavier gloss paper. This enables the creaters of this magazine to sell it at a competitive price as there are lots of other car magazines like this on the market. It also means they can print more pages, and more pages means more information, more info means the consumer feels like they've gotten their moneys worth. And since this magazine has to appeal to a wide audience of people it can't be seen as being too much of a luxury that people won't want to buy it every week. This contrasts with the Audi magazine I looked at earlier which is released in seasons not weekly or monthly. There is clearly a balance that must be struck between cost of production and frequency of issues. Audi can probably afford to print their magazine on higher quality paper because it's released so infrequently compared to Autocar which need to produce thousands every week. 

Production costs aren't a problem that faces me directly since I'm designing one-off spreads however it might be a good idea to consider how the type of magazine I'm designing my spread for affects how it's layed out and printed. For this I need to decided who my spread (and subsequently the magazine) is marketed at and how frequently it would be released if it went into production.

Autocar reviews are usually layed out with one or two main images with various smaller images around them, usually showing close-up shots of the car. Unlike Audi and Car magazine the designers don't set the body type over any images. The images and type exist in their own spaces. Autocar layouts are very grid based. They feature 4 columns per page and the images usually line up with the columns but not always. However the images always fill the page horizontally if they don't align with the columns.

The colour scheme is limited and not particularly prominent. White background with black text and red or yellow used to highlight important words or graphics. It's basic but does the job well I feel since the spreads are very image heavy which makes them look quite colourful already. The use of bold type to create subheadings and highlight key facts is a simple way of creating a clear typographic hierarchy that works in my opinion.

The typefaces are fairly consistant throughout. All the body-type and subheadings are in the same serif typeface and the headings are in a more sharp looking san-serif typeface. The serif typeface they use is quite soft looking, similar to Georgia, which easy to read and familiar looking. This would be suitable for a mass-market magazine aimed at a wider audience. The san-serif typeface has an edgier feel to it. More dynamic looking but not massively. Still easy to read and most likely good at catching audience attention.

I also noticed they start all their articles with a drop-cap that extends 6 lines. I imagine this is useful for a busy layout design as it quickly tells the reader where the article begins so they don't get confused or start reading from the wrong part. There are other design elements that help guide the reader I noticed, such as small arrows at the end of a column to indicate the article continues on the next page.

Overall Autocar isn't as creative or unique in the way it's designed but then it doesn't have to be, because it's a commercial magazine focusing on information more than design, not unlike a newspaper. Personally I'd like to be more experimental with my design but I like the idea of incorporating interesting bits of information about the cars like Autocar does with fact files and using pros and cons. I know now that my target audience will significantly affect how my design turns out as well the content my article includes.