Synaesthesia: Existing products research

When looking for content for the magazine, I found an exisiting Synaesthesia focused magazine which became good research for the type of articles that do work and how they have chosen to present it. 


'Synaesthesia is an online literary and arts magazine. We publish two issues twice a year, and aim to engage writers and artists in an exploration of the senses. We love poetry, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, photography and art. We set a theme for each issue, and encourage a multi-sensory response to each theme.'

The magazine relies on submissions form anyone based on the issues theme that gets announced a few months in advance. The one I am creating will be a special edition to an exisitng magazine, so only the 'best of' synaesthesia artwork and interviews will be included.  

As well as the printed publication there is an online rchive of all of the submissions that are featured in the magazines. This is a good way to allow for people to be informed about synaesthesia in the most accessible way. The content for this magazine is not just on the condition of synaesthesia, but also general feelings and perceptions etc. 

These are some screenshots of some of the pages in one of the issues. As the magazine content is reliant on artist submissions, it is hard to establish a consistent visual style throughout the whole magazine. In terms of layout and overall visual style it has a different aesthetic to what I was aiming for as I believe that the target audiences would be different. With a more creative and design conscious target audience the layout descisions will be influenced not on materials realted to synaesthesia, but existing creative magazines such as Cereal, People of Print, Its NiceThat etc. 

The large amount of visuals in this magazine is appropriate for the content because it is a very visually focused topic and although the words have a large amount of relevance, the images strongly support them.