Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

The primary reason for starting Colors, noted Kalman, was that
Toscani was unhappy with the magazines in which he advertised; “He
would get insane when Vogueand Vanity Fairhad the audacity to turn
down Benetton ads because they crossed the line from being safely elegant
to strongly editorial.” Toscani wanted a magazine that would build upon
what he was already attempting to do through advertisements, and Kalman,
who had been working with him on researching the photographs, wanted a
magazine that would do nothing less than “change the world.” Hence the
bilingual (English and Italian) Colorswas “The first magazine for the global
village,” said Kalman, “aimed at an audience of flexible minds, young people
between fourteen and twenty, or curious people of any age.”
Colorsis ostensibly a visual magazine because no matter how good
a translation of text is, some meaning or nuance is always lost. An image
needs no translation. The magazine further intended to be “nomadic and
focus on subcultures and tribes,” and its design has been just as “nomadic.”
Under Kalman’s tutelage Colorsdid not adhere to a single format. Each
issue had a different graphic configuration (although the same gothic
typefaces were repeated); the first three had radically different sizes and
shapes. “It was not tied to any one environment.” Kalman explained. And
since he believed that most magazines trade on despair, he wanted Colorsto
be naïve enough to look at the world in an optimistic way. That proved to
be a real challenge.
In its often disturbingly vivid coverage of such themes as deadly
weapons, street violence, and hate groups,Colorsoffered a disquieting
contrast to the publisher’s own fashion products. Even the way it was
printed, on calendered pulp paper, which soaked up ink and muted the
color reproductions, went counter to the brightly lit Benetton shops with
happy clothes in vibrant colors.Colorswas not Benetton’s darker alter ego,
but it did serve to “contextualize,” as Kalman defined it, Toscani’s
advertising imagery. Indeed the basis for much of the criticism leveled at
Benetton’s advertising campaign had been the absence of context. Without
a caption or explanatory text the images appeared gratuitous—shocking
yes, but uninformative. The campaign signaled that Benetton had some
kind of a social conscience, but the ads themselves failed to explain what it
was. With Colorsthe advertisements appear as teasers for a magazine that
took stands on issues of war and peace, love and hate, power and sex.
Colorsexplored themes routinely ignored by the mainstream press,
such as “How Much?” a story about how much money entrepreneurs pay
for human body parts throughout the world, and “What’s Sexy?” a
compendium of what turns people on around the world.Colors’ fourth, and
most charged, issue was devoted to racism and expressed the need for