My project for course: Innovative Design Systems for Editorial and Digital Media

From Lust for Life to Revolver

For this project, I chose to redesign Dutch music magazine Lust for Life. This magazine focuses on classic rock music from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and pays limited attention to more recent music. Consequently, Lust for Life is mostly read by an older public.

Lust for Life's original title was Revolver, but it was changed after a conflict between stakeholders. Thanks to its catchiness and its slightly more transgressive connotation, I opted to reuse the old title.

The redesign aims at rejuvenating the magazine and shifting its attention a little towards new music without losing respect for the classics.

Typography
For the masthead, I opted for Dazzle Unicase (Device Fonts), a geometric display sans serif that is perfect for a bold, in-your-face logo.

The headers and standfirsts feature a mix of Tiller (Fort Foundry) and Brother 1816 (TipoType). These typefaces work perfectly together and ensure a modern look with a little nod to history.

For the body copy, I used Source Serif Pro (Adobe Originals), a highly legible, uncomplicated serif.

Colors
Lust for Life used a darker, somewhat dull red as its main brand color, which I decided to make a lot brighter and more eye-catching. The secondary colors were picked from '70s music magazines. Together with the primary brand color, they create an appealing palette with a touch of nostalgia.

Cover
I decided to keep the cover simple - an eye-catching masthead, a single striking photograph and a subtle block of cover lines at the bottom, to set the magazine apart from its competitors, who often rely on screaming cover lines.

Grid
The magazine needed a flexible grid that can accommodate longreads, shorter articles, lots of different formats of photography and collections of short texts such as album reviews.

I have used a 12-column grid that will be split in two, three, or four columns depending on the use.

Layout
Artists often provide their own photography, often commissioned by themselves or their record labels and beautifully executed by expert photographers. I chose to put the photography center stage and keep the rest of the magazine style rather subdued, using color sparingly.

Web & social media
The Revolver website aims to be a reliable, high-quality source for music news, while also funneling readers towards a subscription to the paper magazine. For the home page, I decided to give center stage to a preview of the magazine cover article.

For social media, I created a number of eye-catching templates to accommodate magazine article teasers, summaries of album reviews and quotes.