Magazine Publication Analysis
C Mini, Project 1
Magazine: Cosmopolitan
Project Time-Frame: One week
Partner: Michelle Dang
General Hypothesis: Cosmopolitan is, at heart, a “women’s” magazine, regularly discussing makeup, fashion, and the happenings of celebrities. To suit and cater to their international demographic of young, career-oriented women, Cosmopolitan creates the nebulous image of the “Cosmo Girl”; she’s cool, successful, beautiful, fit, current, and generally has her shit together. Most critically, Cosmopolitan wants to convince every one of their readers that they too can be a “Cosmo Girl”. It is these aspects that define the design of Cosmopolitan. The aesthetic is fun, whimsical, and youthful, but is still easy and accessible. It’s recognizable, but not stagnant. This is done through a combination of vibrant color, playful imagery, and informal language, though a touch of sophistication is added with a strict use of typography. Grid structure is rigid digitally, but the printed Cosmopolitan plays plenty with their grids from page to page. Overall, Cosmopolitan meets their audience gracefully and precisely, delivering the content that they keep coming back for, and in a package that describes the consumers themselves.
Initial Thoughts:
Going into working on Cosmopolitan, I’ve always had a prejudice against it for being a “grocery store checkout” type of magazine that seems to prey upon women’s insecurities. Maybe it’s influence by my mother, but Cosmo was always a shallow magazine in my mind. I still think this is true, but only for the American edition of Cosmo. As I was looking at the different Cosmo sites, I noticed that the international sites for Cosmo promoted different initial content than the American Cosmo. Where the American Cosmo promoted an article about recreating the “freakiest” sex positions from a TV show, the UK Cosmo promoted an article analyzing why we romanticize problematic characters, Italy: “Why to love your period”, and Japan: “Why mental health matters”. It’s refreshing to see the international perspective deviating from a simple view of womanhood. But who is reading Cosmo after all?
To approach analyzing the publication, with assistance from some very helpful leading questions from Vicky, I was able to break my thought process into two parts: “who and what is Cosmopolitan for?” and “how is Cosmopolitan designed?”. The first directly impacts the latter, so I start there.
Who and what is Cosmopolitan for?
Audience:
“…but not just anyone can be a Cosmo girl. ‘It’s not an age thing, it’s an attitude thing,’ says Ms Adcock. ‘It’s glamorous and sexy, and it’s about success — some people are scared of that, at whatever age.’”
Cosmopolitan, as given on their media kit, shows that their readers are not exactly the most diverse group, but Michelle and I inferred as much.
We guessed that the target for Cosmo would be a young, career-oriented woman, interested in “classically feminine” topics as well as pop culture news. That’s not too far off. 45.8% of Cosmo’s readers are 18–34 and of their 13,135,000 readers, 11,080,000 (or 84.35%) are women. 58.4% are married and 69.6% are employed, with a median household income of $70,273 — solidly middle class. (Source: Cosmo Media Kit). Altogether? A young, career-oriented woman living a modest lifestyle. But beyond that, who is she?
Context:
Audience defines a lot, and now we know the target person for the Cosmopolitan demographic. A different readership, for example one made up of wealthy old men, will probably read a different magazine (maybe Golf Digest?) than our Cosmo mostly-girls. Similarly, the location of where a magazine is offered will change its audience. Once you exist outside of national borders, you have a lot more to think about. Cosmopolitan is an incredibly international magazine, being currently published in 64 countries. I’m not sure how many international websites Cosmo offers, but at least accessible to me are 7 international versions: US, UK, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Likely due to its large audience and international presence, Cosmo has an incredibly high popularity. 13 million readers is an impressive number… but, that’s not just it. We don’t just consume printed content now-a-days. Besides their 13 million magazine readers, Cosmopolitan also brags an impressive 473 thousand TikTok followers, 865 thousand Pinterest followers, 1.6 million Twitter followers, 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, 3.6 million instagram followers, 12.3 million Facebook followers, and finally 29 million unique web and Snapchat visitors. (Source: Cosmo Media Kit). It’s certainly not an audience to blink at.
That being said, Cosmopolitan is not an expensive thing to consume. The US print issue is 4.99 USD and the UK print issue is 8.99 USD. On the web, the digital website articles have a limited number of free per month (I’m unsure as to the number), but it can all be unlocked for $3 a month, at least in the US. Even more, for $20 per year, you get more exclusive content such as: “unlimited access to Cosmopolitan.com, exclusive bonus content just for members, nine (9!) issues of your favorite mag, your own shopping hotline staffed by Cosmo’s team of deal-finding experts, early access to events, merch, and other perks, a members-only newsletter on the regular, extended free trial of All Out Studio, and 15% off your next purchase at the Cosmopolitan Shop”. Whatever that all means. And other locations on the web, like Instagram and TikTok, are totally free.
Content:
As a part of their monthly issues (as taken from the November 2021 issue), US Cosmo releases 96 pages, 28 of which are short form content and 42 are long form content. The UK Cosmo (September 2021 issue) releases 138 pages, with a likely similar ratio of short form and long form content. There’s a pretty high representation of ads in all of that, but considering the capitalistic society we live in, I’m not terribly surprised. Printed Cosmopolitan magazines are released monthly, but digital Cosmo content is updated daily by creators.
When talking about the topics covered by cosmo I think this quote from the editor-in-chief explains it best: “Every month I want Cosmo to feel like this intoxicating cocktail. A variety of things: career, fashion, beauty, sex, love, family, friends. All the drama that is a modern woman’s life encapsulated in one place” (https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/cosmopolitan-editor-magazine-encapsulates-modern-womans-life-flna1c10120175). Of course, this varies between international publications. Michelle and I, like I mentioned before, both agreed that the US magazine has a more shallow approach to its subject matter, whereas the UK Cosmo publication is spun into a more inward facing direction. The UK Cosmo seems to care more about what’s on the inside of each of their readers, not what’s on the outside.
Sections:
- The US magazine content is broken into: Celeb, Fashion, Beauty, Life, Astrology, Lust, and Features.
- The US website content is broken into: Celebrities & Entertainment, Beauty & Style, Sex & Relationships, Astrology, Lifestyle, Food & Cocktails, Travel, and Politics.
- The UK magazine content is broken into: Play, Glow, Move, Style, Relax, Celebrity, Read, and Love.
- The UK website content is broken into: Entertainment, Beauty, Love & Sex, Fashion, Horoscopes, World/Life, Body, and News & Politics.
Design
This is the steak and potatoes of what we’re talking about, what’s most intriguing to me as a future designer. A good designer can take the audience, content, and context and use design to create something appealing for all parts. They create a whole cohesive image that is, dare I say, almost universal.
Imagery:
Cosmo, similar to in their written content, approaches the visual make of their magazine from a very whimsical perspective.
Photos are typically camera-aware, but Cosmo doesn’t mind using a couple candids.
They also use lots of playful icons and doodle style lining to break up any of the grids they use on the pages.
Even on the web, Cosmo draws in its readers with interactive elements, like squiggles under titles and sunshine lines above headlines that change color and move when hovered over with the mouse.
Structure:
The Cosmopolitan printed magazine has lots of varied spread structures, often utilizing photos to break up their body copies. However, at its core, as explored by Michelle, the US Cosmopolitan magazine seems to use 12 picas for their columns of text; each page using a 12 column grid with two gutters between them.
The UK Cosmopolitan seems to use 12.5 pica text column, only a slight deviation, but they interestingly use a 9 column grid.
Cosmo’s approach on the website is more or less the same. From a strictly structure perspective, Vicky mentioned that typically websites use 12 column grids, for what I assume must be standard scaling purposes. 12 is a nice number to break down into smaller column divisions as the screen is condensed. However, initially I was a bit confused by grid structure, as the 12 column grid didn’t quite fit. I tried putting in and it still left weird gapping in areas where there really shouldn’t be.
Could it be I needed a higher number of columns? Wrong. I asked Andrew and he suggested that some websites actually create a 12 column structure with no gutters at all, instead adding gaps moving inward from the column divisions, rather than separations of the column divisions entirely.
Unsurprisingly, this worked very well. My new 12 column system with no gutters fit perfectly across the entirety of the US Cosmopolitan main page. Moving on to the UK Cosmopolitan website, the same 12 column grid fit across the UK main page. I tested the Cosmo Italia web main page out of curiosity, and it fit there as well. All of this also interestingly fits in with Cosmopolitan’s US written structure… Nice!
Heads up: sorry for the long photos.
Typography:
Also across both printed and international divisions (a.k.a. everywhere), Cosmo uses consistent typography: Futura for headings, Georgia for body text. Very, very occasionally, a thin version of Futura will be used for featured details, but this only really happens on the website. This surprisingly limited amount of variation in type wasn’t what I expected out of the whimsical Cosmopolitan, but I think it adds some nice consistency across the magazine and website. If they varied their type more, I don’t think Cosmo would have such a clear aesthetic.
Color:
Color is probably one of Cosmo’s most distinctive design aspects. With pink, reds, and yellows dominating, the publication is vibrant and punchy. Vignettes use a slightly larger color variation, but still stick to vibrant, warm toned color. Altogether, more subdued colors (i.e.: pink) often paired with a more vibrant equivalent (i.e.: red), to take on spot coloring.
The color that Cosmo uses is fun, bouncy, and youthful, without sacrificing poise… similar to how they portray a “Cosmo girl” to be.
Cosmo’s Misson
I’m not going to lie, Cosmo’s mission page is… vague at best. It reads at first like Cosmopolitan is trying to give a higher purpose to their magazine when it doesn’t really have or need one. However, after breaking it down more, Michelle and I could agree that there are some authentic sentiments in the lofty language.
Cosmopolitan emphasizes content that women can authentically relate to and embrace openly. Their candidness distinguishes them as a publication from market competitors, and it makes the readers feel closer to them. Cosmopolitan’s “Cosmo Girl” mentality embodies the idea of the “modern woman” — a young woman in the city who prioritizes work, fashion, sex, and beauty.
Conclusion
From comparing the printed Cosmopolitan magazine, the digital Cosmopolitan website, and the US and UK publications of each, there are many more similarities than differences. Across all four combinations, the audience and context stay the same, along with the color, typography, and imagery. However, while the US and UK are consistent from print to digital, between the countries content and structure differ. The US publication feels more shallow, focusing on surface level topics (“A beginner’s guide to a confusingly smooth butt”) while the UK publication feels much more personal.
Yet, despite measurable difference, the outcome remains the same: the Cosmopolitan reader is youthful, sexy, and put-together. They are in touch with pop culture, but doesn’t forget to take time to nurture themself. The design of the publication feeds into this with their playful and informal nature, especially with their use of color and imagery. Cosmopolitan’s branding is contemporary and whimsical, a tribute to their audience.
Figma Planning: https://www.figma.com/file/rd3jGSUBevEETXAbUnAFiN/Cosmo?node-id=0%3A1
