September 30, 2008 Advice · Art School

Do you have any advice on what major should I take if I want to work in magazines?

In order to answer your question, I need a few answers first. What type of magazine are you interested in working for; fashion, art, technology? Even still, there are many subgroups to these broad content ideas; circulation size, demographic, and niche market. For example, I intern at W magazine, which is a rather large fashion publication under the umbrella of Conde Nast. The target audience is wealthy, established, older women who can afford the crystal-encrusted dresses and Michael Kors’ mink jackets housed within its pages. However, W’s target audience couldn’t be further from my actual lifestyle; a broke college student who can barely afford the $34 nylon tricot leggings from American Apparel. Regardless, I still find inspiration for my illustrations, design, and dream wardrobe from the pages of W magazine.

It also is important to note what type of responsibilities you want to hold at that magazine. Do you want to book the models for the editorials? Design the layout? Price out the cost of rights to all the images used in the pages? Be the photographer hired to shoot the editorials? Be commissioned to make an illustration for an article? Do you want to run the print shop responsible for producing thousands of magazines? It all relies on where your passion and talent lives. There is a whole magnitude of art-related jobs that can be related to magazines in some way, shape, or form.

With that being said here is a quick rundown of a few ways to apply different majors at art schools to working at a magazine:
Communication Design:Creative Directors, Art Directors, and Designers; manage the look and feel of the way the content is laid out on a page. Could also work on the website of the magazine, managing web content and layout.
Fashion Design: Design the clothes featured within the pages of the magazine.
Photography: Take photos of the clothes and models featured within the pages of the magazine. Take shots of interiors, accessories, etc. Possibly find and hire photographers to take photos for the issue.
Design and Management: Public relations, bookings, money and more of the ‘business’ side of the magazine.
Illustration: Draw/paint/create a piece of work to illustrate the articles in the magazine.


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5 responses so far ↓

  • Jeannine Said: September 30, 2008

    This is a great breakdown of the various components of the magazine industry for all those aspiring to work for one someday. I just stumbled upon your website and it’s very impressive.

  • Rachel Said: November 15, 2008

    hey thanks for posting this! i’m a junior in college and happened to click on this page while looking at possible majors to narrow down colleges. this was so helpful. it’s exactly what i want to do but i wasn’t sure the right majors to take to secure a career in a magazine i read them like crazy and would love to work for one someday. thank you for posting this. it was a big help!

  • Martha Said: May 7, 2009

    When you say communication design
    would that help you eventually get editorial jobs?

  • Olivia Said: January 27, 2011

    Thanks for posting this it helped me out alot it answered alot for me now I know what I have to do in oder to be accpet at Persons New School of Design.

  • Arlene Said: February 20, 2011

    What if you want to write articles for a magazine like seventeen or vogue, what would you major in for something like that?


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