Cosmopolitan is an international women’s magazine. It was first published in 1886 in the USA as a family magazine and was formerly titled The Cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan is the best-selling young women’s magazine in the U.S. and the largest young women’s media brand in the world.
Cosmopolitan today is distributed in more than a hundred countries, is published in 34 languages, and has 58 international editions. It has become a kind of symbol of a fashionable, successful, stylish, and self-confident modern woman.
The first Cosmopolitan was published in 1886 by Schlicht & Field and first positioned itself as a publication for the whole family. Since then, Cosmopolitan has gone the interesting way from a family and literary collection, a political society magazine to a world leader among publications for women.
Since 1905 Cosmopolitan has been part of Hearst Communications. William Randolph Hearst purchased the publication for 400 thousand USD, which today equals approximately ten million USD.
Cosmo today is a legendary brand that consists not only of paper and online magazine versions, but also TV channels in Canada, Latin America, and Spain that broadcast to girls and women ages 18 to 34.
What is Cosmopolitan?
Cosmopolitan is the name of one of the most famous magazines for women, which was established in the United States in the middle of the 1880s, and today has subsidiaries all over the globe, with the magazines published worldwide in dozens of languages.
The original Cosmopolitan logo was an extravagant red inscription spelling the brand’s name. The font was a pretty typical serif style with narrow, tall letters. The only odd part was the letter ‘C’, which was modeled as a crescent and stretched as far as the letter ‘M’. The writing was often put onto a rectangular background featuring a brown rock.
Cosmopolitan is an international fashion magazine for women. After it was first published in 1886 as a family magazine, it was transformed into a literary magazine and then became a women’s magazine in the late 1960s.
The Cosmopolitan logo is very recognizable due to its fuchsia pink main color. It is a color of the wordmark, or the icon’s background (where the lettering is white). Another version of the Cosmopolitan Ivón is a fuchsia “C” in a black square.
The font used for the Cosmopolitan logo is Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed. Franklin Gothic is one of the most popular sans serif types ever produced. It was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1902 for American Type Founders.
The bold and condensed uppercase lettering from the primary badge of the iconic Cosmopolitan magazine is set in a modern geometric sans-serif typeface with narrowed contours of the letters. The closest fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are, probably, Neue Helvetica Pro 79 Compressed Bold, or Mynor Bold Compact, but with some slight modifications of the characters’ shapes.
As for the color palette of the Cosmopolitan visual identity, it is based on an intense and bright fuchsia shade of pink, a very stylish and feminine hue, which looks elegant and girly. The depth and brightness of the fuchsia here represent not only the “female” focus of the editorial but also its passion and power in the industry.