Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences: Desire by Design

Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences focuses on movie magazines, publications first produced in 1911 for movie fans in the United States, but soon reaching movie fans on a global scale. Bringing together scholars from different disciplinary and international contexts, this collection considers fan magazines as objects of material and visual history. The designer’s toolkit aided movie magazines in seducing their readers, with visual elements, such as fonts, photographs, and illustrations, plied across both editorial content and advertisements. In this way, each issue was subtly designed to stir desire in readers and moviegoers alike. By focusing on the visual aspects of fan magazines, a key pleasure for readers, this collection provides detailed examples of how visual elements engendered aspiration and longing, thus putting the visual contents of the fan magazines at the heart of every chapter.