10 replies to this topic

[Derwent Motorsport]

I still get a variety of printed magazines, not just motor sport ones and I am puzzled by the variety of the size in terms of page area. They were once all A4  but now vary, sometimes only by millimetres. It can't all be cost, although MG Enthusiast is much smaller than it was a couple of years ago.  I compared a few the other day when I was having a clear out and one mag was about 3mm wider than the other one but also about 3mm shorter so the area would be very much the same. In fact I got six different magazines and they were different.  

[john aston]

You can tell it's a quiet time  in the motor sport year when a chap has to resort to measuring magazines  

[Rob Miller]

I'm old enough to remember Boxing Day Brands in 1959 and the Argentine Grand Prix on February 7th, 1960. Winter was different back then.

Rob

[Charlieman]

Club magazines, small production runs, will be printed on ISO standard cut sheets, folded and stapled (occasionally stitched). Differences between actual size and nominal ISO size will occur when the magazine is trimmed on three edges. If the page designer wishes to bleed photographs to the edge of the paper (ie no margin), the result will be noticeably smaller than the nominal ISO size, unless the printer uses (expensive) oversized SR sheets. 

 

Magazines you might find in the shops will be printed on standard size paper from rolls. Actual magazine size will depend on equipment used by the finishing department, magazine thickness, paper quality, type of binding etc. Publishers may switch to a different printer which is when the most significant changes occur.

 

There are also periodicals which are produced to art book standards using art book methods -- at considerable cost. Variations in quality are not an option!

[sabrejet]

I still get a variety of printed magazines, not just motor sport ones and I am puzzled by the variety of the size in terms of page area. They were once all A4  but now vary, sometimes only by millimetres. It can't all be cost, although MG Enthusiast is much smaller than it was a couple of years ago.  I compared a few the other day when I was having a clear out and one mag was about 3mm wider than the other one but also about 3mm shorter so the area would be very much the same. In fact I got six different magazines and they were different.  

 

Not all magazines were A4; back in the early 1970s I started buying Aircraft Illustrated, which was about 2 inches shorter than the height of an A4 magazine. Airfix Magazine and Military Modeller were the same smaller size, as was (Railway Modeller?).

[Charlieman]

Not all magazines were A4; back in the early 1970s I started buying Aircraft Illustrated, which was about 2 inches shorter than the height of an A4 magazine. Airfix Magazine and Military Modeller were the same smaller size, as was (Railway Modeller?).

The ISO A and B paper sizes became standard in most of Europe from the mid 1970s. Your Aircraft Illustrated example sounds like Quarto, an earlier size convention which has squarer proportions. I think the older conventions, which varied too much to be taken as serious standards, can provide more readable line lengths than geometric A sizes. (You can blame a decline in type setting skills too.)

 

Edit: to correct lousy type setting.

Edited by Charlieman, 13 February 2025 - 20:18.

[marksixman]

I still get a variety of printed magazines, not just motor sport ones and I am puzzled by the variety of the size in terms of page area. They were once all A4  but now vary, sometimes only by millimetres. It can't all be cost, although MG Enthusiast is much smaller than it was a couple of years ago.  I compared a few the other day when I was having a clear out and one mag was about 3mm wider than the other one but also about 3mm shorter so the area would be very much the same. In fact I got six different magazines and they were different.  

And just look at the size of a Mars bar these days !!!

[Ray Bell]

'Quarto' was the size in the old days...

 

A bit shorter than the A4. One problem was when the magazine-supplied binders were too tight a fit for the next year's magazines.

[Dick Dastardly]

There are some magazines that are A5 size.....

[JacnGille]

 

Edit: to correct lousy type setting.

Probably took less time that wood block carving. 

[Bob Riebe]

I was finally siffting threw my hoard of old magazines, too many and some had to go, and how over the decades magazines have shrunk in height is a bit annoying as one had to make sure all the old ones are on the botton of the pile or nice neat stacks look like they were piled by a drunken Irish Man.

 

I did not pay attentions but one can almost know the decade of some by the how much shorter they suddenly were.

What bother me more, and is a sign a magazine is probably going belly-up is how much thinner they start to become.

 

I noticed that, even before comparing recently Hot Rod, and Hemming's Muscle Machine and Classic Car were getting thinner and thinner.

Now Hot Rod is a pathetic quarterly and the other two ceased this last Spring.

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