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Last month, it was announced that Grafik was to stop being published. Its French publisher Design Flux confirmed that it had "discontinued" the magazine less than a year after taking over its publishing and distribution.

Grafik was relaunched under Design Flux in February last year. Before that, it had gone unpublished for eight months after its previous publisher, Adventures in Publishing, went into administration in June 2010.

But less than a year after Grafik's revival, co-editors Caroline Roberts and Angharad Lewis said Design Flux had taken the decision to close the magazine.

We thought it would be nice to look back at the previous incarnations of a household graphic design title.

It started life as Hot Graphics International in the mid 80s during the digital revolution. With help from Meta, it transformed it into a monthly magazine – Graphics International.

In 2003 MadeThought were involved in the rebrand and redesign of the magazine, now called Grafik.

We’ve got more than a few issues knocking around the studio, so we've included some cover images of our favourites:

Issue 81 of Graphics International featured a very tactile furry, velvety cover with some silver foil.

For the 100th issue, silver foil was used to foil the number 100 in a repeating pattern. Simply beautiful.

Issue 107 saw the change from Graphics International to Grafik.

And the reborn magazine now looks, or rather did look, like this

Things have been so busy here, we almost forgot it was our first birthday! We set off a year ago hitting the ground running and we've been sprinting ever since – stopping every now and then for some refreshments (mostly the yummy home baking in the kitchen by our sister company tictoc ).

Mostly everything has gone to plan – we've been growing steadily, picking up great clients and hearing that they're happy, producing high quality work consistently... things like that have been important to us. 

Sadly, the yukka plant died. My drawers are still crammed with stuff, the filing could be better, we'd like some more pictures up on the walls. But hey, these things will get done in time.

We're loving working with our sister company tictoc. They are truly inspiring – and their jokes aren't bad either. We've worked on some great projects together, including Viro and Peanut Print, allowing clients to have a more connected online and offline presence.

It's been a year crammed full of brand strategies, new branding, rebranding, printed literature and advertising. It's had moments of hard work, challenges and long hours – but mostly it's been full of interest, satisfaction, pride and a lot of laughter!

Bring it on Year 2...

Annual pilgrimage to the GSA degree show was enjoyable as usual – however overall, a bit disappointing in terms of exciting work this year.

Here's a brief overview of some work (the good, the bad and the ugly).

There are emotions in us all. Do we take them seriously? Should we? Is there a role for them in marketing? Should we pay more attention to them and use them more intelligently?

Emotions are subject to action – they are immediate. We have feelings, then we have thoughts based on past experiences. Emotions carry more weight than reason – they are about gut reaction and influence cause and effect. They are the root of motivation. Everything that happens is in relation to emotion.

Robert Plutchik created a wheel of emotions in 1980 which consisted of eight basic emotions 

Emotions are displaying in a number of ways eg. through facial expression and body language. There is always a reason for emotion. Finding that out is the lever we can use in business

Some people have more mature emotions – they have a higher perception, a more sophisticated view. This leads to the subject of emotional sciences where there is work being done in areas such as shaping the language of brands.

Emotional marketing has been used by brands such as as Honda, Tesco and M&S. Honda assessed their advertising for the past 10 years and drew conclusions from the emotions each of the adverts portrayed. The first observation was that there was no consistency and it was also noted that when analysed some ads actually portrayed negative emotions. Through awareness of a brand’s emotions, we can manipulate the chosen emotions we want to portray. 

There are tools whereby emotions can be measured. They can be tracked – for example through words used on twitter, blogs etc, which illustrate how people feel about a brand. Emotional analysis can be applied to both customers and staff –  knowledge that can be extremely valuable to companies as they can then begin to understand what is causing these emotions -–particularly relevant if they are negative or not alligned with message they want to portray. This can be the start of the journey of  finding ways to manage them. Emotion can be measured ‘before’ and ‘after’ to see the differences, something that BMW has been doing. What emotions are your customers feeling now and what do you want them to feel?

Staff wellness is a growing issue - how are people performing - is it to their optimum level? Measuring emotion can provide real evidence and allow HR departments to solve problems that are emerging.

Engagement is an issue. Are people engaged with your brand (do they ‘flow’) or at the opposite end of the spectrum - do they not give a damn? For example if an empoyee is anxious, this breeds fear and anger. We need to aim for ‘flow’. We are aiming for positive feelings, not negative ones to be right in the centre of an organisation. This needs to be worked with specific actions and feed into a company’s strategy.

If companies engage with their customers and their staff to understand their emotions, it could help with long and short term communications. Businesses could start to have ethical policies.

Emotion is a powerful dynamic force that can drive behaviour. It varies with gender, culture, consumers, business.... Emotional intelligence (EI) is becoming more important that IQ. It is more relevant. Both individuals and companies need to be self aware and attuned to emotions.

What problem are you trying to solve? Contact us if you would like to more about this subject. Emotional analysis could be the answer.