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American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 14.2 (2004) 264-275



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From the Periodical Archives:

Magazine Mastheads, Icons and Branding, 1741-1899

From the earliest periodicals in colonial America, publishers sought ways to represent graphically the ideals, goals, and identity of the individual magazines struggling mightily for the reading public's attention. Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine (1741) featured the first example of what would become the central iconography of the eighteenth-century magazine, an Indian headdress with a transcription gesturing to a very different history: "Ich Dien"—the motto of Edward, the Black Prince [Figure 1]. This melding of "native" authenticity with European authority (and by extension, classical education) defined the ambitions of the colonial and early republican periodical. Throughout the century, magazines would invoke this combination graphically in similar terms, as for example in Isaiah Thomas's Royal American Magazine (1774-75), which featured an Indian woman complete with peace pipe conversing with a classical Muse [Figure 2].

Early magazines were also anxious to stake a relationship, typically a fawning one, to the British magazines that were the models (and usually primary source material) for the colonial periodicals. One such attempt is found in Benjamin Mecom's short-lived New-England Magazine (1758) [Figure 3]. Mecom borrowed the icon of the ruffled hand clutching the bouquet of flowers directly from Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine [Figure 4], promising that he would offer the same quality and assortment of wares in his own homespun magazine. He also borrowed the motto: "E Pluribus Unum." The goal of making one out of many defined for the British Gentleman's Magazine the annual project of making one volume out of the individual monthly issues. But for Mecom's New-England Magazine and for its successors, this goal would prove central. Mecom used the motto (which would later be borrowed by Mecom's uncle, Benjamin Franklin, for the national seal) [End Page 264] to define the content of each individual issue, and other early magazines would extend the image in a variety of ways, seeking to capture the goals of providing both aesthetic and political unity out of the diverse materials that made up the periodical's contents [Figure 5].

After the Revolution, a new set of nationalistic icons present themselves, promising (often beyond the capacity of the editors to deliver) original content and claiming for themselves a role in the definition and defense of an American culture. Throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century, a familiar repertoire of icons was deployed (in increasingly ornate arrangements) to stake out the national ambitions of the magazines in a growing periodical marketplace. The Native American iconography (Indian maidens, headdresses, and so on) largely gave way to Washington, flags and other patriotic symbols, but the impulse behind Franklin's original image—the desire to fuse claims to "native," homespun authenticity with the best of the classical and European traditions—remained in many of the mastheads and other graphic representations the nineteenth-century magazine used to "brand" its product [Figures. 6 & 7].

As the market for periodicals expanded during the "golden age" of American magazines, such graphic branding became increasingly important in effectively targeting specific audiences, including those directed toward gendered audiences [Figures 8 & 9]. Similarly, magazines with more literary ambition sought to differentiate their product, seeking new devices for specifically branding their products. Caroline Kirkland's Union Magazine, for example, which promised in its first issue to defend the country through native art instead of patriotic show, devised an organic typeface for its masthead that symbolized its ambition to aid in the "cultivation of taste" of the nation [Figure 10].

In the later nineteenth century we see the development of what are in many ways the forerunners of the pioneering turn-of-the-century product "mascots," such as Buster Brown and Aunt Jemima, characters developed to popularize a unique identity for individual magazines [Figure 11]. This is also the period in which ever more elaborate and ornate mastheads sought to capture the consumer's attention...

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