This idea occurred to me in a recent meeting, as Andy was telling us about a post he had contributed to on magculture. I explained that last year I had read an article in the Guardian about how fluorescent jackets to make people stand out now infact renders them invisible. This led me to the conclusion that in the modern world fluorescent colours no longer stand out they recede, and I wondered what impact this had on the news stand?

I also notice that the use of fluorescent colour is usually in a solid block, but that the edges of that block are angled, not square. This brought to mind ‘dazzle camouflage‘. Dazzle camouflage works on the idea that unlike conventional camouflage that blends an object with its background, you take one object and break it up. It was rightly assumed it would be very difficult to hide a battleship but it was felt with the use of angled lines and shapes you could break it up. Thus confusing enemy gunners. So I was wondering how visually confusing the use of angled and strong coloured edges was on the eye.

So I have broken out all the magazine covers to see how they behave. I have taken my local newsagents shelf as a starting point. Then I have just shown the fluoro colours, then the flouro and primary colours. Do the individual magazines hold their own? Does the use of strong angles in the design cause them to break up? Have the individual magazines become invisible and camouflaged? Hmmm…..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Notebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.