Notes from a seminar / lecture on design

A thousand apologies for the delay. It was unavoidable. I was struck by the disease of not being able to decipher my own handwriting within 24 hours of having written something down. And by the fact that putting up this post didn't have a deadline. This is what I could salvage and make sense of. If you feel I missed out something, add it in comments.

What is design for?
Design presents the message and is also the message. It is a visual language, which is used to convey specific matter. The content and the medium has some bearing on the overall presentation of the message. Using design effectively strengthens your message.

Factors influencing design (medium)
Print:
The kind of paper used (e.g. coated vs uncoated stock) says a lot about the publication. It also creates issues pertaining to printing, clarity and the feel of the magazine.

Screen:
Platform differences (Mac vs PC) affect the viewing of a webpage. Another factor to consider is the viewing of a page on different web browsers.
PDAs and mobile phones now allow web access, though on these systems, one may see a more direct navigation system as compared to a normal web browser.
E-book readers, meanwhile, cater to content that is already packaged in a certain format.

Which comes first - content or design?
The content comes first - Christian
Design may come first depending on the audience. If you are making a website more enticing for 50+ users, you may want to consider design first and then the content - Mandissa
Just think of it as a whole! - Keith

Magazine redesign
A magazine redesign is the creation of a design scheme for a magazine. It may be a new design scheme or just a fine-tuning of an existing scheme. A redesign is the process of synthesising into a workable design, guidelines and templates that are easy to use, effective and repeatable. A redesign affects editorial, marketing, advertising and design departments, apart from the readers.
A succesful magazine redesign makes your magazine fit in and stand out.

Elements of page design.
There are three elements to be considered while making pages: Content, Design and Production.
Editorial and advertising pages have different costs of production.
For an editorial page, the following costs must be taken into account: Cost of content creation (i.e. paying writers for articles, designers for conceiving a layout, photographers, freelance contributors), printing costs, production costs, and distribution costs
For advertisements, there is no cost for creation of content. Instead, there will be costs for printing, production, distribution and ad sales.
The cost of producing one page can be calculated by dividing the total cost by the number of pages produced. (Such simple math).
Calculating the costs of page production are important. In case of a new magazine, they may help to ascertain the budget for production and it is may be an indicator for fixing advertising rates.