Fresh from the Field — Platen Magazine Branding by Black & White Studios
This week’s Fresh From The Field features a brand strategy, identity and magazine design for Platen Magazine by Black & White Studios.
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Brief
Platen is an emerging literary magazine launching in early 2019. A quarterly printed publication, Platen aims to target book lovers engaging in online literary content such as YouTube videos, Instagram posts and profiles, blogs and communities. Each issue will feature emerging writers’ submitted responses to featured photographs taken by up-and-coming artists.
The magazine’s founder, Ariel Bissett, approached me to create a brand strategy, visual identity and initial editorial design for the magazine ahead of its launch in 2019.
Design Studio Response
The Platen visual brand was influenced by these three keywords: organic, engaging and innovative. The magazine’s identity needed to be organic to create an approachable, honest visual brand, while maintaining a level of sophistication and quality. It was also necessary that the identity be engaging for the magazine’s audience. As a largely younger demographic, Platen’s audience are looking for more youthful, exciting and relevant visuals to pique their interest and encourage their engagement. Lastly, in the realm of literary magazines, Platen’s visual identity needed to be innovative. It needed to present a new and exciting way of interacting with literary content that stood out against the rest.
Platen’s visual identity employs the use of colour, typography, pattern and imagery to ensure the communication of an organic, engaging and innovative brand. The colour palette consists of two primary colours: light carmine pink and plantation green, as well as dark jungle green, lily white and alabaster as neutral accompaniments. The colour palette also includes four secondary colours. This range of bright, contrasting colours allows for a large variety of combinations which all work to keep the work fresh, vibrant, innovative and engaging. They make a bold, youthful statement that is all but unseen in the literary magazine sphere and create opportunity for consistently new, exciting and intriguing design.
Handwritten typography was deliberately chosen for Platen’s logotype, creating the sense of craft involved in writing, representing writing itself, and again, presenting something new and interesting for literary magazine readers. This logotype is paired with a sans serif typeface, Montserrat, and a serif typeface, Lora, to create a complete, flexible and beautiful font suite.
