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“Wired” Magazine

Magazine or periodical design requires input from a publishing company manager, an editor, and an art director. It's challenging and interesting work. In this section, there are examples of a family of articles for a single journal incorporating color and a single-page article in black-and-white.

Design Brief

The solicitation, simply stated, was to make "Wired" magazine, well, look better to a maturing readership.

For its first years of publication, the pages were splashed with Pantone inks and bizarre collages of objects. ("Look, I just discovered Photoshop.")

Fluorescent greens clashed with oranges and text was set in 2-point type on odd baselines. So in a sense, a redesign had nowhere to go but up.

Wired Cover — The Russian slogan across the masthead says “Geeks of the World Unite.”

Drawing on basic modernism, I proposed a lot of white space, classic typefaces, and grids. A Soviet-era Constructivist motif seemed to provide a good vehicle for this. In addition, I had free reign for a cover design and made an original pen-and-ink illustration.

Typography notes are with the respective articles.

Primary article takes these motifs to the pages (click image)

Secondary article mutes the concepts but continues them (click image)

Column returns to the motifs of the cover (click image)

 
   

 

 

 

 


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