e-flux journal redesign

Contents page with three tall photo strips (a nebula, a building reflected in water, swimmers in the sea) above article teasers and the word content set very large

The brief

An editorial design exercise on the third year of the programme: take an existing issue of e-flux journal, the monthly art-theory publication from New York, and redesign it as a printed magazine. The material was real: three long essays by Chun-Mei Chuang, Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Erika Balsom, plus the masthead, contents and distributor pages.

The approach

The layout uses a two-column text grid on a portrait page, with a heavy grotesque for headlines and a light version of the same family for running text. Every essay opens on its own page with a large headline and a single photograph, and the contents pages are built from tall photo strips, one per article, with the word “content” set as large as the page allows. Footnotes sit in the outer margin and page numbers are marked by a short black rule.

The outcome

The result is a 23-page print-ready PDF with crop marks, exported from InDesign in June 2021. The pages shown here are the contents spread and the three essay openers, trimmed to the page edge.

Contents page with three tall photo strips, page numbers 4, 10 and 14, article teasers by Chun-Mei Chuang, Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Erika Balsom, and the word content set very large at the bottom — Contents page for the three featured essays.

Second contents page with six narrow photo strips above a three-column list of further articles and authors — Second contents page listing the rest of the issue.

Article opener with the author Chun-Mei Chuang, the bold headline Politics of Orbits: Will We Meet Halfway?, a large pull-quote and two columns of text with footnotes — Opener for "Politics of Orbits".

Article page with a full-width photo of a blue comet-like hydrogen cloud and a red star on black, with two columns of text below

Article opener with a tall photograph of a woman walking below a reflected building, next to the bold headline Geopolitics of the Diaspora by Nadia Yala Kisukidi — Opener for "Geopolitics of the Diaspora".

Article opener with a film still of people carrying metal basins on a pebble beach, the headline Shoreline Movements, the author Erika Balsom and a poem excerpt — Opener for "Shoreline Movements".

Text page with a photo of swimmers on an inflatable seen through trees at the top and two columns of text with footnotes below