Hasta La Ideas

Amid all the doom and gloom in the magazine world (apart from at CR of course) many seem to be clinging onto the impending launch of Condé Nast’s bi-annual style title, Love, as the sole light in the darkness. And we have an exclusive first visual of the magazine’s logo

Love, which launches on February 19 will be put together by the same creative team behind Pop, who have defected to the new title en masse. While still feverishly finishing the layouts for the first issue, creative directors Lee Swillingham and Stuart Spalding (of design studio Suburbia) gave us first sight of Love’s logo which, says Swillingham, embodies the differences between the new magazine and the one to which it is sure to be compared.

“Love will be like the older sister of Pop,” Swillingham says. “It’s an evolution of the concept of a high fashion and style maga­zine. It’ll be a bit more grown-up, with better budgets and more possibilities creatively.” Condé Nast’s involvement, he thinks, will give them more clout, allowing them to attract photographers that they had not been able to work with at Pop, while also showcasing new talent.

For the logo “we didn’t want anything that looked like Pop, which is a little bit plastic and very much a product of its time. We wanted to ignore any notion of being hip or trendy and do something classic.”

The logo uses Cimiez, originally designed by Gert Wiescher and based on a 19th century French engravers’ typeface. The reason? To hark back to the early days of maga­zine publishing as well as Condé Nast’s heritage. “We re-drew it and tweaked it to make it more suitable for a ‘headline’ setting,” Swillingham says. Other versions will be used in later issues, including a flat graphic variant.