1890-1930 Advertising explodes
Suddenly magazines were very attractive to advertisers. Before the turn of the century, even the most popular magazines carried only a small amount of what we call classified advertising and almost no large display ads. But after some resistance, the last of which died out in the 30s, mass market magazines all came to depend on advertising to survive. This changed magazines completely. They no longer sold people information and entertainment; their main purpose was to provide advertisers with a steady, returning audience.
Advertising exploded, but not just because of the magazine. The country was now knit together by railroads, which made large-scale distribution networks possible. New manufacturing technologies (and the productivity gains of Frederick Taylor's "scientific management") made it possible to mass-produce goods for unprecedented reach. And the invention of plate glass windows, around the turn of the century, made possible expansive storefronts, which in turn set the tone for the large department stores which placed the most expensive early advertising. But the coevolution of advertising and mass media was dramatically important. Ads made it possible to sell magazines below production cost, which made it possible to lower their price still more, which increased their audience, which made them even more useful to advertisers.
Advertisers discovered that with full pages and the new language of design, there was room for pictures, slogans, headlines and the psychic symbols of soft sell. Graphic design came to mean sophisticated visual means of developing impact.
Ad agencies started in 1890. They developed research and circulation boosting: the subscription discount offers, the efforts to survey a magazine readership to document their demographics for potential advertisers. Because one advertisement plate would be used to many magazines, page sizes became standard, and since then magazines with unusual page sizes have had difficulty surviving. Because copy pages had to compete with ads for readers' attention, editorial art departments began to use advertising-type graphics.
The most successful magazine designers were often former ad agency artists. They mimicked the slogans that were early advertising's most successful feature by playing up article headlines and subheads in bold lettering. They introduced full-color editorial spreads when advertisers insisted on full-color advertising. They reshaped the formats to bring readers closer to ads. Not until advertising did stories continue at the back of the magazine.
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