Showcasing the most current innovations and artistry found in architectural lighting alongside engaging and inspiring editorial, Warmwhite Magazine brings a sophisticated voice and a fresh personality to the commercial lighting trade publication space. Each bi-monthly issue features new project profiles from commercial spaces, museums, exhibitions, public spaces and high-end private residences, all brought to life in a large (23.5 x 32cm) format. I was assigned to create the masthead logo and the entire run-of-book format. To complement the range of invention inherent in lighting design, the underlying grid is designed to be adaptable to a variety of page-column options, including uneven width applications paired with pull-quotes or sidebar features. The core aesthetic is centered around a typographic program leveraging sleek modern serifs with architectural nuances, stark, monoline grotesks and a measured abundance of white space. The effect is to break away from the cold, understated minimalism pervading the industry, introducing a more editorial personality while still remaining quintessentially clean and modernist.
Masthead Logo
The masthead logo was drawn from scratch to suit our desired modernist aethetic without appearing too generic. We explored a range of existing typefaces to get the right feel, but none hit the mark. A low-contrast sans was then created, retaining enough contrast where the joints meet the stems to keep it sophisticated. The letterform geometry is slightly extended while the shoulders are a bit squared. This, plus the angular treatments to the ‘i’ and ‘t’ and deletion of the dot over the ‘i’ give it a sleek, signature look.
Extended Geometry / Angular Features
Retained Contrast in Joints
Alternative Masthead
A second masthead design was produced for the alternative name ‘LL’. This name was a reference to the technical abbrevation for lighting fixtures as used in industrial lighting plots. Ultimately, the name ‘Warmwhite’ was preferred and thus it was put aside.
Final Cover
The cover design is kenetic in terms of content. A single image can dominate the cover without text elements or a square image can allow space for a feature text teaser. The latter version serves to establish, from the cover, the editorial nature of the magazine.
Format Grid
The grid program is designed to provide consistent guidance for inventive layouts and to break up the monotony of a standard layout model. Although the resulting grid is very complex, it is made very user-friendly through the inclusion of 22 master page variations. These provide the page designer with a menu of layout possibilities, each displaying only the applicable gridlines and elements needed for that selection. Variations are available for single-column, 2-column, 3-column and 4-column applications, uneven-column applications and provisions for decks, pullquotes and sidebar features. Specific master pages were also developed for such things as content-rich FOB pages and Q&A formats. The feature-well pages are left less structured to allow for creativity.
Page Furniture Library
A library was created for drag-and-drop elements and iconography. The icons were based on the symbol used to denote light fixtures on architectural plots, taken to a more stylized level. This theme runs through the book, as rubrics, project tags and even semicolons in the table-of-contents. A series of stylized rules were created from the ‘w’ letterform, joined to abstractly mimic a lighting filament.
Typographic Program
The typographic program is centered around two complementary looks for heads and decks: a modern, architectural serif and a stark monoline san-serif. The intent is to swap between these two looks throughout the book. The serif look uses Beirut Text Book in the heads and Beirut Text Light in the decks. The sans look uses Spezia Medium in the heads and Faktum Extralight in the decks. The head/deck pairings can also be swapped. The running text is set in Beirut Text Book, as are rubrics and page folios. Pull quotes, call-outs, project tags and cover lines bring in GT Sectra Fine Bold for added weight and flair. Captions and small sans applications are handled by either Faktum Semibold in all-caps or Spezia Medium in u&lc. All are available for display in feature well.
Selected Spreads
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