Measured.
Magazine cover and article
Music expressed through Asian graphic design
The core visuals for the magazine cover and the article are inspired by Asian graphic design, which often minimises the use of rigid geometrical forms in favour of intuitive and organic structure. These concepts express humanity’s relation to nature, which also can be seen through the aesthetics of music.
While exploring layouts and grids for a music magazine cover, many interesting grids of old science magazines came through.
Eventually, a metronome was used as a concept to reflect the magazine’s name and purpose.
The grid for the cover repeats the metronome scale. Additionally, the name sits on the 5 first lines as if it’s a music sheet notation.
How to design an article about jazz history that reflects the essence of the genre?
As it is very well pointed out in the article, jazz is hard to pin down into any category due to its unshakable characteristic – improvisation. During the research for a concept, it helped to associate the genre with the nature of Chinese calligraphy. That gave further ideas on the colours and typography of the article.
Further, the grid and layout was inspired by the ancient Chinese bamboo scrolls. This allowed a free-flowing effect to be locked to the structure. Similar to what jazz is. Improvisation within the system.
Grid: 13 columns, no margins, no gutters.
Fonts: Maelstrom Sans Bold, Helvetica Neue
About
editorial, typesetting, composition
educational project
Australia, 2023