Umbra is a new quarterly magazine that follows the people who keep cities running after dark: nurses, bakers, drivers, and the shift workers whose labor is usually invisible. The brand needs a visual identity as confident and considered as its subject, built to survive four issues a year without a dedicated art director.
Overview & Goals
- Build a modular grid and typographic system that a two-journalist team can run without inventing new layouts each quarter
- Design a cover system flexible enough for a new photograph every issue while staying instantly recognisable as Umbra
- Establish an elegant, bold visual language that does not rely on commissioned illustration the magazine cannot afford to repeat
- Deliver a fully laid out dummy issue with real text as the template and proof of the system
Budget & Timeline
The grid, type system and a fully designed dummy issue are due by the end of November. Issue one goes to press in February and reaches newsstands in March, setting the production rhythm for every quarter after.
Publication & print
- Logo files
- We still need a logo
- Format & extent
- 230 x 300 mm, 96 pages plus cover. Four sections per issue: a long opening essay, three reported pieces, a photo story, and a short back section.
- Binding
- Perfect bound
- Content
- Both still need work
- Print run & paper
- 5,000 copies for issue one, offset, uncoated 100gsm inside with a heavier uncoated cover. Uncoated throughout even though the photo story will fight us on it.
- One-off or series
- Template for future issues
- Handover
- Print-ready PDF for our printer
- Structure
- Three sections: a long opening story, shorter essays, and a back section of listings. Four to six ad pages. Quarterly.
- Print colors
- Not defined yet
Target Audience
Umbra speaks to two overlapping readerships: people who already collect independent magazines for their design and ideas, and the night workers the stories are actually about.
Style
Typography
Chosen
- UmbraRefined & high-end · High-contrast serifExample typeface: Playfair Display. A starting point, not a requirement.
- UmbraNeutral & functional · GrotesqueExample typeface: Inter. A starting point, not a requirement.
Colour
New color direction
Bold & vibrant
High saturation and hard contrast. Built to be noticed in a feed.
Examples of the mood. The final colors are part of the job.
For print
The new palette has to be defined for print as well: CMYK values for four-color process, and Pantone or HKS for any color that must match exactly.
In the client's own words
Umbra is a quarterly magazine about the night: the people who work it, the cities that run on it, and what it costs. Issue one is next March. Nothing exists yet beyond a name, a commissioned first set of essays and a photographer who has agreed to shoot the opening story. We are three people, two of us are journalists and none of us is a designer. We need the magazine designed as a system we can produce four times a year without hiring an art director, which we cannot afford.
Scope & Deliverables
- Grid and typographic system built for InDesign
- Section templates covering the opening essay, reported pieces, photo story, and back section
- A cover system with fixed structure and a variable image well for each issue
- New logo and masthead
- A designed dummy issue using real text as the working template
- A short handover note defining what can and cannot be changed
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design templates simple enough for two non-designers to lay out an issue without inventing anything new
- Build the cover as a repeatable system with room for a different photograph each quarter
- Keep the typography restrained enough that a placement mistake is still obvious
- Plan the paper and print choices around an uncoated stock even where the photo story resists it
Don't
- Do not build a look that depends on commissioned illustration the magazine cannot pay for every issue
- Do not introduce more typefaces than the team can manage consistently
- Do not design anything that requires a trained designer to maintain after handover
- Do not treat this as a one-off issue: every decision has to survive four issues a year