The Big Issue Rebrand, Magazine Conventions & Intertextuality

 

First issue of the new look features a vendor, showing The Big Issue's primary focus on their charity work

The Big Issue on their rebrand:

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the magazine is the perfect time to redesign it to reflect the changing situation of the country. The new look is impactful, easy to read, more active and campaigning. We will be a place to agitate for those at risk - calling on governments to act, and third sectors to unify and mobilise. And we want to galvanise readers to become change makers.

Inside every week we have The Dispatch, a concise summation of the news you need to know about. Opinions on the week's big issues. And all the important cultural coverage you've come to love and expect.

Magazine Conventions

The typography refers to the different types of font used which will evoke certain feelings (e.g. serif fonts more traditional, sans serif more modern) as well as the positioning of those fonts.

The way all these aspects come together is the composition of the magazine. The rule of thirds is usually used when making the magazine, with the central image drawing our eye to the middle, and the most important text at the top as this is where the eye is drawn to first.

Covers of The Big Issue:

• Will usually relate to a celebrity/vendor, social change or entertainment
• Are typically critical of any politicians who appear on the cover
• Are unusual in that they do not follow a house style faithfully as other mainstream magazines do
• Moved the masthead around (in old, pre-rebrand issues) from the top left to the top middle or top right, and its colour, size and style also changed
• Are generally uncluttered
• Mostly feature one person
• Connote idiosyncrasy, liveliness and a lack of pretense through these variations

Magazines & Genre

• The Big Issue is defined by its distribution method (street vendors)
• It is not constrained to any one genre (e.g. health, news, fashion) like most other magazines
• It does not need to be recognised on retailers' shelves
• The subjects it features are political, celebrities, or historical

Intertextuality

• Where a media text creates reference to another media text
• Using images or ideas which are familiar to the audience may generate potentially nostalgic associations (e.g. Stranger Things) and new meanings
• John Stuart: "Media incorporates, raids and reconstructs" aspects of other texts, genres and discourses (arguments about ideas)
• Intertextuality is used to appeal to The Big Issue's target audience who will have the cultural capital to understand the references
• e.g. Nigel Farage/Sex Pistols, vendors/Sgt. Pepper's, social change/Vertigo
• Used liberally as 72% of Big Issue readers are ABC1 and 43% are AB
• In terms of psychographics, its target audience are reformers and explorers

The Big Issue and Politics

• The Big Issue holds all politicians of every stripe to account
• Target mission is to dismantle poverty (by creating opportunity, through self-help, social trading and business solutions) and fight for social inclusion
• It has campaigned on issues such as:
• anti-globalisation
• high energy bills
• making the government aware that its welfare system doesn't reduce poverty
• the living wage
• They offer business solutions to social problems (ethical capitalism)
• The magazine does this by:
• Offering the vendors a hand up to set up their microbusiness
• Campaigning for social inclusion and holding the powerful to account through its coverage of issues
• The Big Issue is continuously critical of politicians, big business, banks and their inability to tackle the Big Issues