

Ask HN: If clean simple design is better, why are magazines so busy? - jasallen

I happen to think that clean, flat design is the bee's knees.  But in critically evaluating my own assumptions, I don't have a good answer for why the magazine industry, which has a much longer history of graphic layout than do apps and websites, does not seem to have ever gone that way.<p>Even leaving out covers, which have to vie for magazine rack attention with each other, the inside pages of most magazines are a mess of color and gradients and designs.  Thoughts?
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blowski
There isn't "one design to rule them all". There are designs that fit the
objectives of the business.

The objectives of most magazines is to sell as much advertising as possible,
typically through CPM. I'm not a designer, but I'm guessing it would be hard
to design a print or web magazine that featured loads of advertising and still
looked minimalist. The ads are screaming for attention, so the content has to
scream for attention alongside them.

Magazines which don't tend to make most of their revenue from CPM advertising
have more layout flexibility. The Economist comes to mind.

