Umbra is a quarterly magazine about the night: the people who work it, the cities that run on it, and what it costs. It sits between the independent magazine shelf and the hands of the shift workers, nurses, bakers and drivers it covers, and it needs a design system elegant enough to earn its place on that shelf while staying simple enough for a three person team to build four times a year without an art director.
Overview & Goals
- Build a grid and type system that a three person team with no in-house designer can lay out in InDesign without inventing new choices each issue
- Design a cover system with a fixed structure that accepts a new image every quarter, so issue two does not require redesigning issue one
- Establish an elegant, confident visual language that reads as a serious independent magazine rather than a trade newsletter
- Deliver a fully laid out dummy issue with real text plus a short handover note that defines what can change and what cannot
Budget & Timeline
Publication & print
- 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
Target Audience
Umbra is read by two overlapping groups: people who already buy independent magazines for their design and ideas, and the shift workers, nurses, bakers and drivers whose working lives the magazine documents. The design has to satisfy both without flattering one at the expense of the other.
Style
Colour
Direction chosen
Bold & vibrant
High saturation and hard contrast. Built to be noticed in a feed.
Examples of the mood, not the colours anyone has to use.
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 type system documented for repeatable use across four sections per issue
- Cover system with a fixed structure built to accept a new photograph or image each quarter
- InDesign templates for the opening essay, reported pieces, photo story, and back section
- Fully designed dummy issue laid out with real text
- Short written handover note defining what may be changed and what may not
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design templates so three non-designers can lay out an issue without inventing anything new
- Make the cover a system with room for a different image every quarter
- Keep the palette bold and vibrant against restrained, uncoated paper
- Write the handover note as the single source of truth for future issues
Don't
- Do not build a look that depends on commissioned illustration the magazine cannot pay for four times a year
- Do not use so many typefaces that a mistake becomes invisible
- Do not design anything that assumes an art director will be hired later
- Do not treat the cover as a one-off image rather than a repeatable structure