Hasta La Ideas

It seems Luke Hayman has a rival for Pentagram’s Mr Magazine title – two redesigns from Angus Hyland and team caught our eye this week…

Both are from the same publisher. First up, UK men’s title Palladium. Usually on projects such as this Pentagram would do the redesign then hand over to an in-house team but here the publisher was interested in an ongoing relationship, asking Hyland and team to art direct all five issues in the coming year. Before committing to such an arrangement, Hyland carried out an analysis of the current title, assessing what should be retained and what changed. “I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page,” he says (no pun intended).

With the parameters of the project agreed, Hyland and team set about “tidying it up and making it better… one would hope.” They identified the diagonal stripe on the cover as something ‘ownable’ for the magazine and introduced it on section dividers and fashion pages.

Gotham was used for headlines which is contrasted with Courier in captions. “We wanted to move it away from being too bookish and predictable. With books you are aiming for en even pace through the publication but in magazines you want to turn over the page and be surprised,” Hyland says.

The same team was also responsible for French men’s magazine, Upstreet. The black frame of the cover was retained but most of the information was moved to a block at the bottom of the page. Typeface Tiffany was introduced for headers.

“Doing magazines is a bit of departure for me,” Hyland says, “but a lot of it is common sense stuff really.”