Lazy July cover fail

 Not too long ago I picked up my issue of Vanity Fair U.S. At first I thought "well that can't be right...I feel like I've bought this issue already." That's when I realized they completely "recycled", if I may say, their January cover.

 

Where should I even begin? It's the same damn cover, (minus the christmas ornament and snowflakes but oh dear were those a bad idea...). The shiny red dress? The white background? the red lipstick? WHY? why are they doing this to a july issue? I understand, it's summer, people are out of town or getting lazy but there is no excuse for this cover. The january one was bad enough they really didn't have to make a double. 

To quote the devil wears Prada: "That'll be all...."

What’s This Font 1.4 – GQ Paris

  Hey guys, and welcome to this 5th edition of What’s this Font! Been a while since the last one but worry not, good things are coming. I finally have a little time for myself which means time to research and share my font findings, this time for the French edition of GQ.

The first typeface we will be looking at today is GQ Baton. It’s the typeface used on the cover. It has a few different weights for our utmost pleasure! Baton is a sans serif typeface, slightly condensed with a very modern edge. It’s the perfect partner for the GQ logo and works really well on the cover. It comes in 10 styles with a lot of great glyphs. The typeface was created and art directed by Yorgo Tloupas (currently AD “at large” for Vanity Fair France) and Paul Chemetoff (AD at GQ Paris). It was designed by Fat Type‘s Yassin Baggar and Anton Koovit. The typeface was originally commissioned for the redesign of the magazine in 2010, they had exclusive rights on it for a while but get your wallets out because you can buy it here, score. The complete family goes for 350€, it’s not cheap but not over the top for a typeface of this caliber. Get your credit cards out!

Now let’s look inside and see what goodies we can find there. I’ll start with GQ Slab. It’s used in different sections of the magazine like the cover story (see below) for the title. It’s a very nice spin off the GQ Baton, sturdy and working very well with the other typefaces on the page. It has a strong visual presence without being too overwhelming so kuddos for that! you can find it on the Fat Type website, though it has limited licensing.

The body copy is called Adelle. This font was designed by Type Together and has 14 styles, ranging from light to heavy, with more than 1100 characters per font. It’s an editorial font but not my favorite to be honest. It works in the magazine but I find it too bulky despite its light weights. I don’t find it particularly pleasing when reading but I have to admit the combination with everything else works nicely. you can purchase it here starting at $30.

The last one is the GQ Serif. It’s quite a nice font to end this with! it’s used in various sections of the magazine like in the “manuel du style” section and brings a bit of fresh air to the mix. It’s quite light on its serifs and brings just enough of a change from the baton without fighting it. Like the GQ Slab and Baton, you can find it on the Fat Type website.

 for more magazine fonts, check out my other “what’s this font” posts, enjoy!

Esquire's game of Throne

I have to admit I wanted to buy the march 2014 of Esquire instantly just by glancing at it quickly on my computer screen. Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones stole this cover and am I glad he did. With exclusive photographs by Tom Munro.

Ok so first off, hats. Thank you Esquire for putting this amazing actor on your cover. I'm sure many other people feel that way as well. Dinklage looks amazing here and I cannot control the urge I have to go to the first newsstand and buy this issue (unfortunately, we french people have to wait a little longer to get the latest goodies from America...). The styling is great, the picture is great and the guy is great. This scores major points. However, I can't only be saying nice things...or can i?

Layout wise I have to admit I was a little weirded out, at first. The logo placement felt a little awkward laying like that on Dinklage's shoulders, but after thinking about it, it was an obvious choice. Had the Style Guide copy and logo switched places it would have made Dinklage look a lot shorter. The placement they have now, with his head all the way above the logo helps a LOT. It makes him a lot more present and imposing. To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, I quickly tweaked the cover to emphasize the difference.

On the left we have the original cover, very powerful. On the right, my tweaked cover. It's quite funny because it looks like I made him smaller. Optical illusion. A simple logo placement can make or destroy a cover, this one works very well, kuddos for that because this picture could have easily been ruined.

Esquire, please ship your issues to France faster.

Sincerely. 

J~

FT W

I'm finally posting again after being MIA for quite some time. Its been busy and also a bit hard to get to write anything recently. It's too bad I ,issed a few good covers to comment on in the past few months. But let's not dwell on that and focus on the latest issue of W magazine instead!

For this (quite awesome) issue of W, Cyrus was photographed by Mert and marcus. Now there is no question, the cover is doing everything a cover is supposed to do: intrigue, surprise and please.

The photo is beautiful and at first you don't really know who it is you are looking at, "Is that Lady Gaga..? no, wait…holy crap!." That moment right there, that is how every cover should make you feel, great concept and art direction.
The article written by Ronan Farrow is great as well, really draws you in. Nothing particularly exciting or new, just good writing. The general design and layout of the mag is really clean too which is a plus. Cool illustrations are added in the mix and who doesn't love those…

 All other publications out there should be striving for covers like this one every month, there aren't many good ones out there anymore. Let's take Vanity Fair's hollywood issue as an example. It was pretty but when you open the mag to look at the story, surprise! there is none. The cover is all you get apparently nowadays at VF. I know I do a lot of commenting on cover design and photography but come on you have to back it up with more content inside. If the content is not as good as the cover you are really cheating the customer…

Anyways, W rocked it and I definitely want more.

GQ class

Yes! Thank you GQ for printing three covers for your October issue. Usually less is more but in this case more is better. For this month GQ decided to cover Aniston's husband to be Justin Theroux, actor Idris Delba and singer/actor Jeff Bridges.

The photography is great, all three cover guys look really good. The classic sexy look is back and it feels amazing. The type is not too present, just enough so you know what's inside without ruining the pictures. I do have to mention the two rectangles with headlines are kind of a no no especially the one with the white outline… do people actually still think boxes with outlines are ok? Tried it without the box on the left and instead put it on the right, I feel like it's more balanced that way.

I love the fact that the logo is half black and half white, it really enhances the way the lighting works on each of the guy's portraits. Thank's GQ, for being classy and smooth this month and giving us the gift of a trio.

What’s This Font 1.3 – Vanity Fair France

 Greetings typelings, It's this special time again, what's this font is back! For this 4th and latest edition we will be taking a look at Vanity Fair France. Lots of really cool and recent new fonts here that I'm sure you guys will love. We've got a mix between Vanité, VF Didot and Futura.

The first typeface we will be looking at today is VF Didot. Of course such a beautiful font could only come from one place: Commercial Type. Both the U.S and french version of Vanity Fair are currently using it, though the U.S is also using the stencil and the thicker weights unlike VF France.  The font is used throughout the whole magazine, Front of book, back of book and of course features. It has got the most amazing lowercase italics and they come in a bunch of different weights. They give just enough of a soft feel so that it doesn't look girly rather just elegant. The original Didot is a timeless gorgeous typeface and VF Didot is just as beautiful. It's not available for purchase yet as it was designed very recently. You can keep an eye out just in case but it seems Vanity Fair will have the exclusive use for quite a while. For more info check out Commercial Type. 

 

(Side note: The uppercase italic are are not working quite as well as you would want them to, they are too italic unfortunately...VF France hasn't been going in that direction too much though unlike VF U.S)

Now for my personal favorite, Vanité! Vanité is the font VF France is using instead of Solano Gothic (What VF U.S is using). This font was the result of a design collaboration between the art department at Vanity Fair France and Jean-baptiste levee. This typeface is perfect for the french edition, it's art deco and modern at the same time. This is what's replaced VF Sans and it's doing a great job. It has a lot of wonderful glyphs. Unfortunately, there again, it's not available for purchase but we're keeping our fingers crossed right? You can find more information on Vanite here.

The third one is a classic, Futura. Ah future, I have come to appreciate that typeface a lot in the last few years. It's just so easy to use and in this case it blends so well with the whole design of the magazine. VF U.S and France use the same version of it, Futura (T1). This typeface however has so many different variations that it's really hard to know which is which! I was never able to find where to get Futura (T1) but here is a link to the regular version on MyFonts. It goes for $356 and has 18 different weights. I'd say it's definitely a good one to have in your pocket.

For the last one I'm afraid we're just going classic with the VF times which is used for all the main text throughout the mag. Nothing fancy here, just a sweeter version of Times making an easy read. All and all, good typefaces in the mix! You can check out the fonts Vanity Fair U.S uses here.

 

Vogue Paris' hot chill

If any of you are in europe right now, (or your international press stand), I’m sure you’ve taken a look at the latest Vogue Paris issue. For august we have a special London issue with Daria Werbowy photographed by David sims.

Werbowy is wearing an awesome Ralph Lauren Jacket and all in all this cover looks pretty cute. The colors are nice and the model looks great, (though I could’ve done without the nose piercing…). The typography is very messy however, its quite crowded and you are losing any sense of priority on this cover. Everything is sitting really tight and I found it hard to read. I can honestly say though that this cover looks a hundred times better than the U.S and U.K editions, (by saying this I’m merely pointing out that those two look aweful not that this one looks amazing..).

The only thing that bothered me was the whole theme of this issue. As I mentioned this is a special London edition, and apparently to us french people, a London edition means winter style and cold photoshoots. It seems a bit chilly for an august issue which is disappointing but clearly you can’t have everything (trying sure wouldn’t kill you though…).

It's all about Vanity Fair France

I've been off the grid for a while and missed commenting on a lot of covers in the past months. BUT, I do have a good reason! Since october 2012 I have officially been working as part of the Art department team at Vanity Fair France with Yorgo Tloupas (Art Director) and Genève Doherty (Associate Art Director) on the design of Condé Nast's newest baby. After months of hard work, late nights, junk food and team work, the first ever issue of Vanity Fair France is finally available and we are all so excited!

Who else could have been worthier of our first cover other than Scarlett Johansson? A gorgeous woman with amazing talent. She opened the doors of her parisian life to our team.

This first issue is very dense and has a lot of fascinating articles and great photography. We were able to get talented illustrators (one of my favorite parts), as well as great photographers and writers. So for everyone out there who is not able to go grab their first issue, here is an exclusive sneak peek at what you are missing out on, time to go grab yours! (also available on iPad of course with lots of extra images, animations and interactive delights).

 

Yippeekayay GQ readers

 This March Bruce Willis is taking over the movie theaters with Die Hard 5 and the magazine stands as well. The Die Hard saga star is covering both GQ U.S and U.K march issues, the question is, who did it better?

On the one hand we have the french, who chose to shoot Willis wearing a black t-shirt, keeping things simple, and on the other, GQ U.S, who chose a jean shirt with a tie, topped with a grey/blue blazer. Now simply based on the styling and the pose, I do think the french did it better. I don't know about the U.S, it seems they had this picture retouched a LOT and the actor is starting to look like his wax replica from Mme Tussaud…

Typography wise, Despite the fact that the fonts are way better on french GQ, the layout on the U.S one is better. The french cover feels very crowded and I'm having a hard time enjoying the picture because of it. I also really don't like the way they're advertising the iPad app on the french cover with that yellow tablet on the left, it just doesn't go.

However I have to go with GQ France, I like the photography a lot better and I'm never disappointed with the inside layouts which is not so often case with G.Q U.S. Once again, the U.S will just have to try and do better… what do you think?

On a side note, below is a comparison between french GQ's current cover and a quick retweak I did getting rid of the ipad icon and slightly rearanging the headline type to uncrowd the page. Not necessarily a solution but something to think about, I wanted to give the picture some more breathing space to see how it looked.

What's This Font 1.1 - Vanity Fair

Hey guys and welcome back for this special second edition of What's This Font! This month on the menu is one of my favorite magazines, Conde Nast's Vanity Fair. They have (for the most part) great typefaces that create an overall beautiful design throughout the issues and this post will let you know what they are and where you can find them.

The first one we'll start with is Didot. It is for all intents and purposes Vanity Fair's signature font and is used almost exclusively on the cover and most of the pages of the magazine. It's one of those fonts that you may find more common than you should. It's an elegant and at the same time modern typeface. You can find it on typography.com here for $300 for 42 typefaces. When used correctly this font has a great impact and is of course absolutely beautiful.

Font number two on our list today is VF Sans. It has five weights, two widths, and was created for Vanity Fair by David Harris (design director) and Greg Mastrianni (art director) and designed, drawn and produced by James Montalbano of Terminal Design. This typeface can be found abundantly throughout the magazine, mostly in the artciles and captions, giving it a modern edge.

Finally the third font and also the most recent design addition to the magazine is Solano designed by Mark van Bronkhorst between 2007 and 2009. This typeface is a perfect new addition to Vanity Fair's design library. It is used mostly with a wide tracking and in a smaller point size which does not tone down its importance. You can purchase Solano on myfonts.com, the price is reasonable per font, the whole family in itself though is quite expensive but definitely a good buy.
More info to come soon!

GQ U.S going playboy style?

Ok so I haven't posted in a while but it doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention...I don't know about you but I have been really disappointed with the covers GQ has been publishing lately. It seems instead of publishing a men's style magazine, they've gone trashy on us and have now started to take  playboy looking pictures. I am of course talking about 2 of their latest covers, Rihanna and Beyonce. Yes Beyonce is hot, yes Terry Richardson is a very good photographer and no, this right there, isn't working.

Now I was willing to overlook the Rihanna cover as I did see some good things about it. It was provocative yet not trashy. However I can't ttribute the same compliments to the Beyonce cover. The pictures are not GQ material, just a playboy or maxim shoot at best...(see below). I know they are trying to sell more paper but this is just not right. If you look at GQ france you can truly see a magazine with a strong identity, photography that says something. Even GQ U.K whose identity/graphic design may be all over the place is still stronger than GQ U.S. Am I wrong? you tell me.

Vogue UK december redesign

Here is a 30 minute redesign of VOGUE UK's December 2012 cover, using the same copy and basic layout, only adjusting the main color and of course changing the photo.

SO as I have done before, here is a 30 minute redesign of Vogue UK's december 2012 cover using a picture from inside of this issue to give you an idea of how this could have been way more interesting (and pop since this was clearly what they were aiming for...).I am using pretty much the first typeface that I stumbld across in my font library for this as the type isn't the focus here. I don't know about you but I absolutely cannot tell that these two pictures are of the same woman...

VOGUE UK's december mess

In one of my previous posts I said Vogue could do much better but it also seems they can do MUCH worse. Vogue UK has the gorgeous Natalia Vodianova on their cover for their December issue and this mess makes me want to weep for designers everywhere...

The past two issues of our British neighbors have been disappointing but this one is just plain ridiculous. The photo on the cover (by Mario Testino) is not what anyone could call a Vogue picture nor a good picture. I'm not sure who was in charge of the styling but oh dear! Especially considering when you look at the gorgeous and colorful spreads of Vodianova inside! The pictures in this issue are great, vibrant with all the pop you could want but who could get a chance to see those with a cover so bad? This outfit combined with the grey background makes the whole scene very dull and Vodianova's face and expression is just not right. I have seen her on may covers (including vogues) and I didn't even recognize her on this wreck of a cover. I am being very harsh but it is so disappointing to follow a magazine who did such amazing things just a few months ago and is now daring to publish a cover that looks like this.

The cover photo is not the only thing lacking work, the typography combinations are not that good either. I don't even think I can go in and comment on it, the hierarchy is a complete mess and the line "an explosion of fashion and fun" makes the magazine sound like a cheap version of cosmo.

My biggest concern on this is how can they make the inside layouts so decent and detailed and leave a cover like this? Come on Vogue, please don't keep disappointing like this...

--

here are the gorgeous spreads/photography of Vodianova once you are brave enough to flip through this issue after seeing the cover. The saying about not judging a book from it's cover does not apply here folks, I'm judging whoever is responsible for this humongous difference between the design inside the issue and outside. Shame on you. shame on you.

GQ's Naked Rihanna

For their Man/woman of the year covers, GQ U.S has gone all in showing a naked and steamy Rihanna. Is it getting hot where you are too?

GQ woman of the year Rihanna definitely has nothing to envy other singers and I think this cover speaks for itself. First of all, I am loving the color combination used by GQ for this issue, its fresh and pops up nicely. It goes very well with the picture. I can't say much else type design wise because I am really not a fan of GQ US's covers. I find the typeface very blah and it doesn't do much for the magazine, there's no it factor. Everything is just there laying on top of each other boringly stacked and I think a magazine as big should be able to do better.

Now I won't lie, this picture is HOT, but there is something I find uneasy about Rihanna's face and pose. She looks a bit awkward and mannish. This also has to do with her boy's haircut (not a fan of that...am I wrong?). Her face looks chubbier than we've seen and the way that leather jacket is arranged on her shoulders is not ideal, that left sleeve is really bothering me, very stiff. All in all this is not my favorite picture of her though it has been making quite the buzz. Love the concept and I think they could have shot a way better picture. Her general pose is great but had those few details been altered this picture could have been amazing. Good point for GQ, it's good they have good buzz ideas because design wise they're not flying so high.

what do you think?

Obama is a GQ Man

That's right, for their November cover GQ France has president (and presidential candidate)
Barack Obama!

This issue is great and I'm not only talking design wise, but also content wise. I realize I don't talk about content in my articles but it also plays a big part in a cover. This is definitely an issue you want to pick up if you can read french. Those great articles are of course completed by great design. It fascinates me to observe how the same magazine ends up being so completely different from one country to another. The general design of GQ US is pretty nice but I don't love it the same way I do GQ France.

Anyways getting back to this awesome new issue, definitely a go getter! the article and layout on Obama is well worth your time trust me. I usually don't enjoy reading articles in magazines like this but I have to say this one actually gets me to. The layouts are perfect for legibility and well organized.
It's a stunning cover, loving the blue they used for the headline and the picture of President Obama is quite nice though I wouldn't have minded it being a bit bigger to get to a real portrait type photo.

Honestly this is the only thing I can find that might bother me a little bit, apart from that kudos to the whole GQ team in Paris.

Time to go grab yours!

On a side note: Obama has been on a few other GQ covers, which one is your favorite?

GQ U.K has all the Bonds

So it seems I've been a bit scattered with everything showing up on stand at the same time,
and I forgot GQ U.K's November issue with it's James Bond special (doing a bond cover one month after everyone else and doing 6 covers, nicely played U.K), YUM.

Let's start off with the good things about this issue, number 1 there are 6 covers and they all kick ass. GQ U.K has gone all in for this issue and it looks absolutely amazing. All the covers are great, that goes for the photography as well as design, the color palette is perfect and really, seeing those makes me want to devour the inside of the magazine. They are definitely climbing back up on my magazine favorite list as this has scored some major awesome points. Now I don't know about you but there are of course some tweaks that could have been made type wise to improve this issue.

The best cover for me has got to be the Sean Connery one, great picture and really nice type. The Daniel Craig cover is bit too much of an echo of the french edition of GQ. I would have liked to see the same layout they used for Sean Connery on Daniel Craig. But all and all, they rocked the month and it's a checkmate for all the other magazines covering Bond this month.

British Vogue: Quick tweak session

Here is the tweaked cover of November Bristish Vogue, done in less than 30 minutes
using the same copy, same picture and almost the same arrangement.

So from now on I will be posting very quick ( 25min) re-designs of covers that are on stands I wish had been done differently. I am using very basic fonts as my goal is to do this quickly, for this cover I used Arial and minion pro (can't go more basic than that).

Why am I tweaking the cover?

Number 1, it's great training, number 2 I might just be able to make my point better than with words. So to officially start it off, here is a very quick tweak of the November cover of British Vogue staring Jennifer Lawrence. See below for the before and after details.

U.K Vogue bodge?

Like pretty much everyone this year, I went to see the hunger games and loved Jennifer Lawrence. She's been on quite a few covers this past year so let's check this one out shall we?

Like always I'm going to start with the photography. It's quite a beautiful shot of Lawrence wearing a gorgeous Dolce & Gabbana silver and black dress.It's a great image but unfortunately nothing groundbreaking. You would expect something more amazing coming from Vogue.

Design wise it's looking up from the last issue (see previous article) but still, nothing groundbreaking here either. The color palette is very nice, that coral/red color is beautiful and complements the image well. So it's easy on the eyes BUT then again the type placement is a bit off to me. There is a lot of copy competing with each other but I think what is actually bothering more than that is the way the O of the logo is place above Lawrence's head. It's not bringing anything to the cover and the more I look at it the more it's annoying the crap out of me and it looks like a mistake more than something on purpose. Someone probably went : "oh my god this is going to look amazing"and it somehow made it to print that way. Though this would have worked if her hair had been visible inside the O.

All and all not a terrible cover but not an amazing one either. It's nice to look at and I know I'm probably being harsh but Vogue has to be held to the highest standards and in my honest opinion they can do much better.

Vogue U.K: not even trying

OK so I'm going to start with a "what the heck is going on with Vogue U.K" comment:
What the heck is going on with Vogue U.K?? 

At the beginning of the year they came up with gorgeous covers, we couldn't have asked anything more, from the photography to the typography, everything was there to please. You look at both the covers above now and see what I mean. It seems like our U.K friends are leaning towards the American look font wise (which is ,I'm not even sorry to say, not good):

The photography which they usually nail is not amazing and I'm pretty sure the problem with that lies with the terrible clash between the color scheme of Kristen and the pink they used for the type.Yes I have been made aware it's breast cancer month and the color change is a yearly thing (which is great dont get me wrong), what I am trying to point out however is they could have have done something photography wise to make this easier on the eyes. U.S Vogue did it very well, why couldn't British Vogue do the same?

I'd also like to know what is up with that bold and huge sans serif typeface? (that's Nobel bold in case you'd want to know...). Big no no. The typeface they had on the june cover was so sexy that seeing this huge change just makes me refuse to buy this issue. YES, it IS all about the cover, because the cover is the first thing you see and if that's not good well the inside can't have done much better...(not that i wont flip through the issue when I get a chance but right now I'm just not up to being disappointed some more.) To sum up this terrible tragedy, this cover is not a victory for the bristish version of the magazine. ELLE U.S did it better on their June cover and it wasn't even what we can even call a good cover. (see below)

P.S. I must say Nobel Bold is a fine font it's just not Vogue material, seriously, the french made their own gorgeous Vogue font; what are you waiting for?