OAKVILLE, ON—Like the tender morsels of meat appearing on the pages of Chill magazine, the publication's art director wanted the content in the newest iteration to be just as easily digestible.

That equated to a complete redesign offering "small, digestable blocks of copy" with "big engaging visuals," said James McLean of Chill, which describes itself as the "fun after-five and weekend lifestyle" magazine and is distributed free through The Beer Store in Ontario and select newsstands nationally.


The Chill team had conducted some readership surveys and decided they wanted to appeal to a slightly older demographic, he said. "We found out we weren't necessarily appealing to the broadest audience with the way it was designed in the past," explained McLean. "We tried to update the content somewhat as well to appeal to that group."

With that target reader demographic in mind, McLean said the typefaces were updated (Tungsten font for headlines, Gotham for body) while the body font was bumped up in size by almost a half point. The leading increased a bit as well, he said, "partly to help out with our more accurate readership profile."


While the cover layout looks similar to past issues, there is one major difference, said McLean — it was printed using a five-colour process. "It's a full underlay of gold, with the four-colour printed on top," he said. "It gave it a cool effect."

To coincide with the launch of the 50th issue, there will also be an iPad edition launch and a microsite is already live, he said. T-shirts and other items (such as iPad covers) featuring designs by Chill can be ordered through the microsite, McLean added.

The upcoming 50th issue will be released this month at 124 pages.