Ideological Aspects of Publication Design

Abstract

The graphic design and layout of print journalism are two important aspects of the media to which communication scholars have given little attention. While news reporting and news photography have been examined by many, the graphic design of the daily press has received only cursory notice, except when the meaning of the juxtaposition of stories or the significance of the location of an individual story in a specific publication was considered ideologically significant. The lack of critical analysis of graphic design is somewhat surprising since over the last 130 years there has been a fairly steady increase in emphasis on the sophistication of the visual aspects of publication design. This article is an attempt to redress this imbalance by examining some of the ideological underpinnings of print graphics. Historical and semiotic methods are used to relate the meaning of graphic design to its roots in the consumer culture.