Magazine Art and Photography

• Art directors and editors choose the best illustrative material for each article: artwork, photographs, or infographic charts and diagrams.
• Illustrators at the turn of the 20th century were highly paid and admired, offering fantasy, drama, excitement, and warmth.
• Norman Rockwell is forever linked with the more than 300 covers he contributed to The Saturday Evening Post.
• Photos can offer an objective reality with built-in credibility and authority, and ultimately, iconic photos are documentation of the way things were.
• The use of public domain clip art can be cheesy and embarrassing unless a good deal of creative change is applied to the original piece.
• National Geographic's early use of photography gave the new form aesthetic dignity.
• The New Yorker and Playboy are the primary users of cartoons now.
• Reader's Digest tends to use only a few cartoons per issue.
• Commissioned artwork still appears in today's magazines, but not as frequently as it did before the camera lens came to dominate layouts.
• A custom-made illustration has to fit the content of the article and editorial effectiveness.
• Esquire magazine used to feature risque cartoons but no longer does.
• Illustrations were the primary visual option for magazines until after World War II.
• Americans began to demand realistic facts over lifelike fantasy after World War II.
• Photography offered the raw visual power desired by many readers.
• Readers accept photographic images as an objective reflection of reality with credibility and authority.
• Author Oliver Wendell Holmes identified photography as "the most remarkable achievement" of his time in 1859.
• Photography brought concise visual information into the home before television.
• Life magazine set the photojournalistic standard for many years.
• Photography allows humans to separate an experience, texture, or detail from reality.
• Photography allows for the documentation of reality, including great events, the faces of the poor, and man's work.

Are you a visual learner with an interest in the history of magazine art and photography? Test your knowledge with our magazine art and photography quiz! From the iconic illustrations of Norman Rockwell to the rise of photography in magazines, this quiz covers the evolution of visual storytelling in print media. Brush up on your knowledge of art directors, editors, and illustrators, and learn about the impact of photography on the way we see the world. Take the quiz and see how much you know about the history of magazine