The Design Philosophy of National Geographic
National Geographic is one of the only magazines I will always be able to immediately identify. The magazine has an iconic branding led by the bright yellow border that surrounds every issue published since I was born. National Geographic has been in publication since 1888 and the magazine has gone through many changes in design since its first issue, but it has always carried a sense of relevance and credibility.
As the publication moved forward, its visual design became integrated with its informative nature and its impressive status, and the shocking statistics and stories some read the magazines for were coupled with gorgeous images and detailed graphics to draw in a wider readership. National Geographic’s design philosophy became one largely built around the integration of information and visuals, creating a magazine that feels like a different entity every time you turn the page. When Angela and I began looking into the magazine and the website, we expected them to have developed this style similarly, and that the site would have been built off the success of the magazine’s design, but this was not remotely the case.
Design Notes:
- The magazine answers questions in its headlines you would never ask
- Graphics always have a visual focus, but are interlaced with informative text
- The photo spreads are usually dark and contrast with the cream/white backgrounds of articles.
- Photos are often very detailed and reward readers for looking closely with their complex makeup.
- The Table of Contents lacks page numbers, forces the reader to flip through rather than search for one story. This uses the magazines variety to help sell to a wider audience.
- Big Ideas are in Sans-Serif or Helvetica, but all articles and text blocks written in Baskerville
- Formal, Dramatic, Informative, Compact
I initially spent my time looking into two individual issues of National Geographic’s print magazine, specifically the March 2019 and September 2019. From these, I found that each page was visually distinct from almost every other page in the magazine, but that each one had the same margins, fonts, and followed a similar grid structure. The design elements lying behind the broad photos are consistent throughout.
The website’s layout is much different from the magazine. Instead of integrating visuals and text, the visuals take a backseat to the information. The grid is less aligned with the articles and more with the navigation settings, ads, and menus. The National Geographic brand is still present, but in a much different context, a more information than visual based one.
GRIDS:
Our first action after compiling our data was to look into the grid for both the magazine and the website.
We then established three major points of discussion that we could compare and contrast throughout National Geographic’s story.
- Drama: As their magazine and readership evolved, so did their relationship with emotion, their design is reflected in this.
- Credibility: National Geographic spent 130 years creating an airtight brand and have created something with a name that isn’t taken lightly
- Appeal: To adjust to a rapidly growing and changing audience, National Geographic tries not to alienate any one person, regardless of how long or why they have been reading.
We eventually determined that the grid was split into two 9 by 21 grids per page, making 4 per spread.
The consistency of the grid is one of the things that strengthens National Geographic’s brand legitimacy. Its complicated grid allows variety in its spreads that create a sense of trust and cohesiveness that flows through each wildly different page.
We built our initial presentation around a preliminary script that covered our major points, as well as the history, purpose, and audience of both the publication and website.
When building the presentation, we added slides that mainly served the purpose of getting across the points from our script, and added articles, graphics, and even short screen capture videos that fit that description. As we looked through it, we decided on a sleek, mainly blue and white visual style, as well as a grid.
As we built the presentation, we made sure to run through it to detect any gaps in the given information. When we did find one, we adjusted the script to accommodate it, and added new information to both when we thought of a more concise or clear way to relay the information we wanted to get across. Angela and I also decided we would split the presentation into categories and we would each discuss the version of National Geographic that we were more familiar with, leaving me to design the magazine slides while she designed the web slides.
It was difficult to cut down the presentation to what we thought would fit into a roughly seven minute time frame. We were both excited about all the information we had gathered. We had found a lot of interesting facts on the founding of the publication, and while many didn’t make it into the presentation directly, we instead used them to develop our tone and narrative.
After watching upperclassman Sherry’s presentation from years ago, we decided our presentation would highly benefit from animations, as a major facet of the magazine is creating dramatic and dynamic moments. We animated in a way that wasn’t flashy, but made the most important parts of our narrative stand out and stick with our audience.
We wanted to visually push our project away from the famous yellow and black of the National Geographic brand, but wanted to use similar dramatic and narrative choices to the magazine itself. Our presentation has a large emphasis on consistent but visually varied slides, and dynamic presentations of information.
Our presentation became more complicated in its structure over time, adding sections to introduce our narrative more, and tying the ideas through the presentation as we went.
Watching the other presentations as the project came to a close, as well as presenting our own, taught me that there is more involved with the empathy, clarity, and appeal of communications design: a more human element that comes through your own ability to communicate with others not only through your work, but yourself. While I felt incredibly confident writing the script and drafting our argument, presenting the information was more difficult for me. As I move forward in my career, I hope to find a balance that allows me to establish credibility and captivate my audience through my work, and my own voice.