Design Matters

Sheila Heti, Litpop 2013 fiction judge.Usually when magazines hold contests with huge entry fees that include the cost of a year’s subscription, they do it to drum up interest and to expose a larger audience to their work in an effort to hook them and get renewals. It’s a pretty straightforward tactic, and one that doesn’t require a lot of examining. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t, but not because the magazine or journal is bad, only because it didn’t do enough to differentiate itself from all of the others I’ve incidentally signed up to receive. And sometimes it totally backfires. Such was the case, recently, with Matrix magazine and their Litpop 2013 contest.Matrix didn’t have to do much to convince me to enter. I’m not sure how I got on their mailing list, but I must have signed up once upon a time or submitted short fiction to them in the past (probably the latter). In general, I don’t do a great job of curating my email account (hence the regular Toronto Life real estate reports), but I used to read Matrix semi-regularly and I support their mission. They sent out set a series of fun, well-designed missives hyping the fact that they had Sheila Heti and Eileen Myles to judge, that the winners would be flown out to Montreal, provided with free accomodation, and brought on stage to read prior to a live concert. Yes! Sign me up. I think I even considered sending a second entry (something I never do) just because of how great it sounded.Well, I didn’t win. And that’s okay, because I never expect to. I forgot about the contest and forgot about the subscription. Recently I received my first two issues (96 and 97) in the mail. Here’s a taste of what they looked like:

Here’s what the first issue of Matrix I purchased, issue 69, looked like:

I could tell you that appearance doesn’t matter, but that would be a lie. Readers (a limited pool to begin with) can only spend their eight dollars on so much, for one thing. When I first picked up Matrix, I was new to literature, new to magazines, living on my own for the first time in my life, and eager to be molded. I studied Matrix carefully because its design and confidence made it clear to me that its writing was worth my attention. I loved that it was Canadian and it gave me hope for my future as a Canadian writer. I wouldn’t give it the same consideration if I picked it up today. It would depress me. I’d become an accountant.I’m not talking about photos or captions or covers (although, yes, those too). Typesetting is much more important than any of those things. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to learn about line weights, and spacing, and fonts, but it’s one of the most weirdly neglected parts of budget publishing. For example, compare the inside of a Penguin Classic to a Wordsworth edition (I’ve got two versions of Moby Dick beside me as I write this). One invites you to read, and the other just lets you read. There’s a big difference. At 19, I didn’t have a lot of money, and the Wordsworth editions are significantly cheaper than their Penguin counterparts. I already knew who Herman Melville was, and so the Wordsworth edition was the clear choice. In 2005, I didn’t know who Pasha Malla, Alissa York, Rob Benvie, or Angela Hibbs were (all authors in issue 69), and I would have continued not knowing who they were without Matrix’s eye-catching design.^[1]Matrix 96 and 97 look like the work of an over-achieving undergraduate who may have great administrative skills and a demonstrated appreciation of literature, but has yet to discover that an ‘em dash’ isn’t just two hyphens. I speculate that they were either laid out in Notepad, TextEdit, or Microsoft Publisher ’98 (Home Edition). The text either looks cramped or overwhelmed by negative space, or is some weird combination of the two. In issue 69, Matrix’s margins were dynamic, as if to give each piece maximum weight; in issues 96 and 97, it looks like the designer just went with whatever the document presets were, and stuck with them throughout.But probably the best examples of the dichotomy between the two designs is text alignment. In all three issues the columns are justified, but in 69 the lines are consistently spaced and easy to read. In 96 and 97, the lines are sometimes okay, but just as often they separate and break sloppily apart in all directions. 

You don’t have to look far for literary magazines doing more with their text, and I suggest Matrix spend some time evaluating and ripping off its peers. Poetry’s text is laid out in a way that looks considered and inviting. Grain’s text is attractive and well-balanced. Maisonneuve is a good example of three-column style done right, with many exceptions for different kinds of material (such as poetry). Unfortunately for Matrix, the above magazines aren’t just its peers but are also its competitors, and it’s hard to imagine someone walking to a news-stand and picking up Matrix over almost anything else.I feel a bit disingenuous writing this because I know firsthand how much work it takes to put a literary magazine together. That most of that work is probably unpaid, or pays almost nothing. It’s possible, too, that Matrix has lost some of its funding through no fault of its own, and maybe that’s the reason it doesn’t look anything like it used to. I know I’m dismissing countless hours of work that no one has to do, that few people notice, and that is done primarily for the love of literature and building the literary community. Okay. But I’m not the only one dismissing the work that goes into the magazine. By neglecting their design, Matrix is doing it, too.