How do magazines influence people's ideas of design and taste?

Thinking about this question in the first place I was stumped. Brainstorming the idea allowed me to loosen up and I soon found myself scrawling lots of questions and answers that I would like to find out. Answering some of the questions myself in my head, I was hoping that the way I interpreted them would be the way that others did too. Using my parent’s as guinea pigs, I asked them questions surrounding the topic – which proved quite successful. Scraping some questions and adding others, I was able to create a broader but focussed set of questions to gain an accurate set of answers.

Brainstorming the topic

Some examples of the questions I asked: If I were to give you £5 to spend in a newsagents, what would you buy? What do you buy a magazine/newspaper for? How would you describe yourself in 3 words? Apart from yourself who would you say that your children were influenced by?

Using both images and text, I planned to make the interview quite informal so as to make people comfortable when answering. Some were more relaxed than others though, and at times I was conscious of being watched when writing things down. Not wanting to distract, I decided to spend most of the interviews listening to what people had to say instead and interject with supplementary questions when necessary. At times when I asked a question and I felt that they were not being entirely honest, I decided to throw the same question in later on but word it slightly different. Most were happy to tell me then, suggesting that by presenting the question in a different way, people were more willing to divulge more.

Interviewing a real mixture of people, it proved useful in gaining a snippet into lots of different pockets of groups - the saying ‘no two are alike’ was so true here! I had someone who talked about their love of craft then someone who talked about their undying love for football, watching 40+ hours of it a week on television.

Television adverts friend’s comparison money role models music magazines shopping attitude tastes subliminal sponsors location kids Internet influences age family

Covering a lot of different sectors of the topic, I noticed that men were just as susceptible to influences as women - just not always by the same things. With all interviewees, I noticed that they seemed to have their own sense of style. Although they would be the first to disagree that they were influenced by a certain factor, for example the outfits that they had chosen to wear whether by their partner or for practicality reasons, there were certain things they listened to more than others. With most agreeing that they wore the clothes they wore for comfort, where had this idea of comfort come from? Was it individual? Or were the clothes being worn perceived to being comfortable from a magazine advert or from a friend? The list is endless. With 3/5 interviewees claiming that they had been influenced by a friend to buy an item of clothing, you could not help but wonder if they clothes they wore most of the time was due to a friend.


One thing I noticed a big difference between the sexes was their attitude towards shopping. Women seemed to embrace the idea that they were experts in this field where as men (and although most of them hated their outfits that their wives had chosen for them) seemed to let the women take over in this department. Indicating a lack of enthusiasm towards consumerism, I probed the men into why they took a step back with most agreeing that it would cause too many arguments to disagree with their wives. I wonder what a single man’s attitude would be to shopping? The two women agreed that they spent a lot of time shopping and although they didn’t like the idea of shopping itself they knew exactly how to compare prices and where they could get things cheaply. This for me implied that women might trust themselves with money more than their partners and preferred to keep track of their purchases. Probing the women, they told me that their husbands weren’t aware of the amount of money they spent on themselves and the family (maybe did know but just thought better of it to question them!)

It was clear that people were affected by factors such as price and friends when purchasing something. Although most denied price being an issue when I directly asked them this question, later questions allowed me to draw the conclusion that this was actually the case. One of the main talking points in the office once I had conducted the interviews was the cost of a holiday, with many people throwing in their own knowledge about prices and telling others where they could get things cheaper, it was clear that although people are not willing to admit, this sort of conversation suggests otherwise. People were much happier to admit that they had been influenced by friends than advertising giants, even though the latter probably played a bigger part in their life than they thought!

Until this assignment I had never noticed just how much advertising is a part of the beautiful game. One of the men that I interviewed stated he watched 40+ hours a week and seemed proud at the fact that he was not influenced in any way by adverting because he ‘did not watch the advert breaks ever’. Well, I disagree! Advertising is everywhere in football, not just in the commercial breaks, at the beginning and end of a program, advertising boards, match programs and even now the owners and companies that have bought into clubs are starting to steal more headlines than the clubs themselves. Right down to junior sides, advertising boards litter the pitch side and sponsors will appear on the strips – some a bit more ironic than others. Take my dad’s football team for example. Thornton Hibs JFC, hardly Inter Milan but with their ground nicknamed the San Siro, my dad likes to think that there are some similarities. There sponsor is Thornton Parish Church…now I’m not being funny but I’m sure the Man upstairs would not be impressed with his support to a team whose language is every bit as colourful as the rainbow!

My thought process

With everyone admitting that they spent more than £10 a month on magazines or newspapers, they were all at varying degrees exposing themselves to the competitive world we call the media. Preying on people, the adverts that are placed in magazines and newspapers are aimed at a specific audience. All admitting to buying products after they had appeared in magazines and some relied on reviews from other readers as the final push. 4/5 interviewee’s also admitted that they had bought a magazine because a certain celebrity had appeared in it, implying that celebrities, to a certain degree, can be very influential to our decision making.

Gaining an understanding in how people saw advertisements, I asked people to look at advertising images and telling me what they saw allowing them to free themselves from constraints they put on themselves (something that I am quite glad I did as people found it easier to take about visuals rather than try and put some things into words). Constantly looking for reassurance throughout the interview, here answers were exciting and people found it much easier to relax and say what they thought.

An interviewee undergoing the 'celebrity advertising knowledge'

Most people recognised the images that I presented them with, regardless of not whether they were male or female; men knew Cheryl Cole was a hair model for L’Oreal and women linked Wayne Rooney to being the face of Nike. I found that people recognised faces of those people, who for me, were easier to relate to. Cheryl Cole is perceived to be a down to earth Geordie girl and is someone that all girls aspire to be and guys aspire to be with! Wayne Rooney (although he was a blue and now a Manc) is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest players at the moment who young boys and men worship. With companies having their products being endorsed with these popular celebrities, they are certain to be successful. If we see someone we respect do something then we will copy but if a ‘face’ does something that we react badly to, just watch how fast a company drops them!

Overall the results gathered from the interview suggested that we can all be influenced in some way or another, with some being more effected than others. The levels in which we are exposed to vary depending on factors such as location, age, amount of television that is watched, magazines/newspapers that are read, children, but also for me the most important factor, the amount of time we allow ourselves to be exposed!

A Matter of Taste

Define taste.

Hard, isn't it?

Looking it up in a dictionary, I was presented with over 20 different definitions. Just like the meaning, the word has so many different ideas attached to it, one of these being to perceive in any way. With such a broad meaning comes a large number of talking points. Why do we like something when others dislike the same thing? Why do we choose to follow a trend while others ignore? What is good and bad taste?

Breaking taste down into a number of categories, I was able to understand some of the ideas behind it.

We talked initially about language and the way in which we use it and interpret it, with a useful example being that of a designer and client. As designers there is nothing more frustrating trying to explain your idea to someone and them staring back at you blankly, completely missing the point and not understanding what you mean but why should they understand us though, if we don't understand them fully? Why do we feel the need to use all the design jargon that we have learnt and use it in such a context that people do not understand a word. A technique I find useful when presentations are looming is to 'perform' my crit to my parents, who bless are not design minded, but who are however critical. If they don't understand what I am babbling on about they will tell me so that I can look at how I can present the idea in a more understandable way. We are all, thankfully, not the same.

Immanuel Kant disputed that this was not the case, stating that 'Beauty is truth' he argued that people saw things in the same way. Bearing in mind though that Kant lived in 18th century, I suppose this claim is understandable as people did not have the same freedom of speech we have now.

Over the century's taste has evolved into something in which we can express power and status through. Something that Thorstein Veblen worked hard to prove was that behaviour was both socially and individually determined, with the wealthiest people trying to distinguish themselves from the rest. Choosing to buy things that did not conform with the popular taste, it was easy to see who had money and those that did not. An example of this trend being with French women, whose hair became the stage of boasting. The higher and weirder looking the hair the better - it didn't matter that this 'mess' took most of the day to build, it was the idea behind it. Showing that they didn't have to do anything, these woman flaunted the fact that they could afford to spend all day getting their hair done.

With these new trends though comes imitation and as quick as something comes into fashion, it can go straight back out. Trendsetters can kick start a cycle that others latch onto in the bid to become trendy but when too many people are similar to the trendsetter their taste changes and they start a new trend...a vicious circle.




It can be argued that taste is "driven by social factors" which I totally agree with. Depending on where you are in the country, you can (and taking fashion for example) see the different trends. While in London this week, it was clear that most of the trends above the border in Scotland are similar but there are subtle differences too, maybe larger stores or more access to the boutiques allow people to splurge out on designer pieces or could it be that they are more susceptible to celebrity influences down South? The list is endless...

People express their taste through a variety of ways and something that psychologist Sam Gosling talks about in his book 'Snoop' is some of the studies that he has conducted in understanding the way people present things like their music collection to others. He talks about how people display their music in such a way it is the first thing people notice when they visit and how we are guilty of deciding if we like a person or not purely on this factor. Talking about how some people place things in amongst other belongings so that we appear in a different way to others, Gosling discusses how sometimes we seek approval from others and deliberately place things to catch the eye of others - the judgements in which we take away is different depending on our gender.

From a young age girls are presented with a language which shapes them as females. Reading magazines as soon as they are able to has led to the accidental brainwash into females distinguishing what is 'good' and 'bad' taste. Magazines aimed at women still try to 'educate' us in matters and some people almost refer to these as The Bible. Boys lack the ability to describe like girls, probably due to the fact that they were not presented with trends from such a young age the same way girls were. Even now, an item that appears in a women's magazine can be in a men's magazine but be phrased in a completely different language.



Like Disney, magazines are used in educating us on how we should be as women. Bombarded with visuals and words we are constantly being told how to behave and generally conduct ourselves, something I had never really thought about. I don't personally read glossy magazines but I do know what sort of things appear in them and now more and more appear to have the latest diets on the front pages - leading women to think that they have to be skinny to be happy.

Exposing ourselves to these magazines, we are educating ourselves in different trends and are gaining an insight into what defines good and bad taste. We find it much easier to describe good taste rather than bad but is something that we have our upbringing on magazines to thank for, amongst other factors. Trying to define an individual taste is hard but I suppose my new definition of taste is that it is something that we all have the ability to express but it is how we choose to define it that is important.

With thanks:
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