국내 독립잡지 현황 및 표지 디자인 분석

Abstract

Independent publishing can be defined as an act of an individual or a small group to publish books or magazines in small scale. It provides such unique contents that can hardly be dealt with by the established publishing industry and conveys them in unique styles. Independent magazines, a major form of independent publishing, keep recording various lifestyles of our society while showing great differences in visual design from existing magazines. This paper aims to clarify the concept and cultural significance of independent magazines by analyzing their contents. It also examine the visual elements of independent magazines by analyzing their cover designs. As for the method of research, this paper deals with twenty independent magazines, eighty-three volumes in total, as well as many reference books and materials. This paper finds that the contents of independent magazines deal with a small group of people's diverse thoughts, tastes, and desires which often go against the popular trend of Korean society. They also tend to focus on an individual's daily lives in the manner of caricature. This paper also finds that the cover design of independent magazines reveals diversity and originality by using unique formats and fonts and by laying out the text effectively. The cover design also tends to use more images than texts so that it can heighten visual effects. It is hoped that this paper will help to spread more fruitful researches on Korean independent magazines and independent publishing.