Case Study
Magazine Design
Origins
A project creating covers, articles, and layout designs for a fictitious travel magazine Origins that focuses on human history and culture rather than travel advice.
Tools
Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Project Description
Design Challenge
To design the rules and guidelines for a magazine that can be carried through with brand and product consistency year after year. These guidelines should include typography, margins, grid structure, color palettes, cover and spine designs, etc.
Background
Origins is a travel magazine focused on the cultural and historical narratives that define destinations around the world. Instead of highlighting hotels or travel trends, it offers immersive storytelling and visual documentation that illuminate the ancestral threads, lived traditions, and human legacies at the heart of the location.
When a condensed logo is needed (such as for a favicon), a simple circle is used. In most other cases, the wordmark is used with “ORIGINS” in all caps in ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro and the “O” filled in to form a circle.
Masthead for Front Cover
Brand Identity
Masthead & Logo
The masthead includes the name of the magazine in all caps with the O filled in for a perfect circle. ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro was used for its clean lines and symmetrical circular forms in the “O” and the “G”. The circular form symbolizes the common themes of the branding and cover design which revolve around a ticking clock. The clock theme is meant to represent the cyclical nature and passage of time through human history, a primary subject for the magazine.
The issue number and issue date are always present in the masthead, sitting just below the title and justified right.
When used for the front cover, the masthead will always be white.
Cover Design
Front Cover
The magazine is printed at 8.5” x 8.5”, the symmetrical form complimenting the circular design of the front cover content. The primary theme of the cover is the replication of a clock, with each month corresponding to an hour on a standard, analogue clock. This design communicates the cyclical and constant passage of time, a central theme in the content of the publication which focuses on human history and culture through travel.
The circle representing the “O” in the masthead remains central, but the rest of the masthead rotates month to month with each month corresponding to an hour (January = 1:00, February = 2:00, etc.) The entire process cycles through to the beginning again year after year.
The cover images should compliment the rotation of the masthead, which is set month to month.
January
April
July
October
Front Cover Mockup
Spine Design
The spine is white to continue seamlessly with the white margins of the front cover. When an entire year’s publication run is stacked together, a perfect circle is created across the spines of the magazines, which is both the simplified logo for the brand as well as complimenting the shape language of the cover and branding.
Image masking is used to place the same cover image within the shape on the spine, which is unique to each month. This creates a mosaic at completion of the year of all the cover images combining to form a circle.
February
May
August
November
To further communicate the circular, clock form on the cover, the feature article and 2 other prominent articles are presented along the circumference of the implied clock shape. Their position rotates around to best compliment the layout of the cover image, though the typography remains the same. The forms and typography encourage the reader to pickup the magazine and rotate it, physically engaging with the medium.
Spine Design over 12-month Publication Run
12-month Spine Design Mockup
Back Cover
Centrally located on the back cover is a quote related to the feature article of the issue from a relevant source. The quote is reflective of the masthead on the front. It is affixed to a central point, but rotates to correspond to the same “hour” that the front masthead is on, again dictated by the publication month.
“ORIGINS” in its wordmark form spans the full width of the cover, but the top is flush against the edge. Its location can change to any of the 4 edges of the cover, dictated by always being opposite of the direction of the central quote. The front cover image is masked within the title.
A small block of information is put into one of the corners, again dependent on the location of the title and quote. The space is set aside for a special contributor to the issue’s production, typically related to a feature piece. Finally, a thin border line runs along only two edges identical to the margins of the border on the front cover. Its location is determined by the other content on the back.
February Back Cover
October Back Cover
Full October Cover Mockup
March
June
September
December
May Back Cover
Editorial Content
Feature Article
Feature articles use a 6 column grid with a 14 pt gutter in which the columns can be combined in various configurations to create variety and interest page to page. Margins are .75” with the top margin being .5”, pushing the content center toward the top, a comfortable position for the reader.
The article title is DM Serif Display. It’s a subtle serif typeface with high stroke contrast. The subtitle is set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro to pull the magazine’s title type into the interior of the publication. The bulk of the body and remaining text is set in Sitka, a serif typeface, which is easy to read in print and offers a high variability in font weight and style options.
Feature Article
Body copy is 11 pt size and 15 pt leading. The text is full justified with attention paid to avoid rivers in the copy and to avoid widows at the end of paragraphs and pages.
New sections begin with the first line justified left without an indent and the first few words set in a deep red color to identify the start of a new section in the article.
The space after the end of the last paragraph’s section is set to 15 pt to provide additional spacing for delineating the sections while maintaining consistent baselines across columns.
Feature Article
A deep red color is used throughout the publication as a consistent branding color: for article titles, the running footer, and article or section starters. The folio is present at the bottom of the pages dependent on the content of the page itself.
Parent pages are setup within InDesign with varying running footer options to allow easy flexibility throughout articles and features. Paragraph styles and character styles are used to provide quick and simple typography that is consistent throughout the publication.
Table of Contents
The Table of Contents is designed in the style of a travel journal. For interest, it breaks the standard 6 column grid of the majority of the publication. Grid lines are still used to line up elements and create some order in what could be a chaotic layout.
It uses the deep red of the brand color palette and features visual elements that mimic stamps, stickers, polaroid photos, and drawings. Typography for the content titles and pages are clean and consistent with the publication.
Hierarchy for feature articles is communicated through typography and image size or prominence.