News
14 February 2011
Underline Studio overhauls Retail News
TORONTO—It may seem like Business 101, but knowing the medium in which you'll be designing was the deciding factor that resulted in Underline Studio winning the RFP to redesign the Canadian Gift & Tableware Association-published Retail News magazine. “In final discussions one of our members asked representatives from the final three contending design firms what magazines they read and Underline Studio was the only one of the three with an answer. The staff at the other firms didn’t read magazines,” says Retail News editor Erica Kirkland.
With its zest for magazines it’s no surprise Underline Studio often works with the medium. “We are great lovers of magazine design,” says Underline Studio creative director and founding partner Claire Dawson. “We have worked with magazines including University Affairs and Prefix Photo.”
The redesign of Retail News began in October, 2010 and included every aspect of the magazine, from its size — which changed from 8.25 X 10.87 in. to 9 X 10.75 in. — to the way it uses advertising and everything in between. “The publisher said to the editor if you could do anything to anything in the magazine what would you do and they gave her free reign to do it,” says Dawson.
The gift shop-owning audience of Retail News is very design and fashion savvy, says Dawson, so one of the main goals behind the magazine’s new look was to give the book more of a consumer magazine feel through better quality photography and subtle design changes. “The design was really inspired by books like Domino, Real Simple and Martha Stewart Magazine,” she says. “Before the redesign the book had more of a traditional trade magazine feel. We took a look at the departments and made changes to the headers and page numbers so that the sections have [metaphorically speaking] their own voice independent of the magazine’s features, in which we used a lot of full-bleed illustration and photography.”
Omnes, BigCaslon, Peggs, Helvetica and Hoefler were chosen as the magazine’s new family of fonts because of their ability to work together and function for both serious and lighter tone stories, says Dawson.
The first issue of the redesigned Retail News was sent to subscribers in January, says Dawson. Underline Studio will continue to design the bimonthly magazine on a contractual basis. Contact: Underlinestudio.com, Cgta.org/retnews/Home.aspx
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Dawson says one of the main challenges in the redesign was reworking the way the magazine uses product shots to avoid looking cluttered
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With its zest for magazines it’s no surprise Underline Studio often works with the medium. “We are great lovers of magazine design,” says Underline Studio creative director and founding partner Claire Dawson. “We have worked with magazines including University Affairs and Prefix Photo.”
The redesign of Retail News began in October, 2010 and included every aspect of the magazine, from its size — which changed from 8.25 X 10.87 in. to 9 X 10.75 in. — to the way it uses advertising and everything in between. “The publisher said to the editor if you could do anything to anything in the magazine what would you do and they gave her free reign to do it,” says Dawson.
.jpg) |
|
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The gift shop-owning audience of Retail News is very design and fashion savvy, says Dawson, so one of the main goals behind the magazine’s new look was to give the book more of a consumer magazine feel through better quality photography and subtle design changes. “The design was really inspired by books like Domino, Real Simple and Martha Stewart Magazine,” she says. “Before the redesign the book had more of a traditional trade magazine feel. We took a look at the departments and made changes to the headers and page numbers so that the sections have [metaphorically speaking] their own voice independent of the magazine’s features, in which we used a lot of full-bleed illustration and photography.”
Omnes, BigCaslon, Peggs, Helvetica and Hoefler were chosen as the magazine’s new family of fonts because of their ability to work together and function for both serious and lighter tone stories, says Dawson.
The first issue of the redesigned Retail News was sent to subscribers in January, says Dawson. Underline Studio will continue to design the bimonthly magazine on a contractual basis. Contact: Underlinestudio.com, Cgta.org/retnews/Home.aspx
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That Retail News narrowed it down to 3 and had 2 non-magazine reading firms in the final 3. (How bad were the other contenders???)
or
The other 2 firms were dumb enough to say in a meeting for a magazine redo that they didn't read magazines!
In my experience, it's not that unusual for designers to not read magazines. Case in point: the three contending firms we interviewed all had extensive editorial experience. However, Claire and Fidel from Underline were the only ones who could rhyme the magazines they personally read from the top of their heads. The other designers gave pretty expected answers (Wallpaper). One even said Life magazine which ceased publishing how long ago? Claire and Fidel not only design editorial, they read editorial (and not just design magazines) which makes them such great designers. Plus, they're great people too!
underline should enjoy it while it lasts... like annual report, designers will have to seek work elsewhere in a few years
What is it with all the people always putting down print design? This is a site about the design industry as a whole. As a graphic designer, I design for both print and web as do all the other graphic designers I know. I find a lot of these commenters don't understand what design is and that it is not confined to any one medium.
If you don't have a strong liberal arts/editorial graphic design background go into corporate or advertising fields that require less literacy and more scanning and marginal consumer interaction. Editorial is not simply arranging pictures and text on a grid -- if you don't love reading, don't kid yourself, you'll never master editorial print.