Unit 2 – Methods of Cataloging – Written Response

Chosen Text:

J. ABBOTT MILLER

‘Pictures for rent’

Eye Magazine, 14

1994

pp. 68–71

For this prompt, I took the first four pages of ‘Pictures for Rent’ for Eye Magazine (Issue 14, 1994) by J. Abbott Miller. The first two pages of this excerpt are a title page for a magazine spread and the second two pages are what you might consider the body of the magazine spread. I chose to catalogue through metadata, comparing the two core features of a magazine spread – cover and body. I choose to convert the pages into a visual culmination of words indicating the general term for each visual section of the spread. I decided to create constraints of text size for small details, body, image, and title to come out with relative quantities of how many words are involved in each section. 

I found this an interesting method as it removes all context from the text and only relays information regarding the number of words and space the different sections of the spread take up. It becomes what looks like a template for magazine spreads and how to lay out your pages. Yet unconventionally typed into a default two-column Word

I think this brings out the visual aspects of this spread that are fairly mundane and uninspiring in terms of magazine spreads and their potential to convey messages via their medium, which can be quite limiting. However, given the medium of magazines compared to books I think it is more of space for visual qualities to have a voice. I wonder if this could be used as a template to begin a restructuring of this magazine spread to better convey the message regarding stock photography.

This exercise directly conveys the unseen information of the spread. By which I mean nothing typed here is taken from the content of the spread itself apart from the layout. In order to merge the unseen layout of the spread with the actual text and content I wonder if I could overlay the text and photography and experiment with different ways to layout the spread that would lend a hand in conveying the message with a new meaning.