Our art director on DG’s redesign

The new issue of Delayed Gratification looks pretty different to the 53 that came before it. That’s because we’ve just had our annual re-design, and this year our art director, Christian Tate, oversaw some substantial changes. We asked Christian why he chose to give the magazine a major refresh…

What’s behind the new look?
Christian Tate: We’re always evolving the design of Delayed Gratification, with the ultimate goal of making the perfect magazine for our readers – sometimes it’s a tiny change that makes a big difference like increased text size, but this time we’ve looked at the whole structure of the magazine. We’ve created new sections and we have a new font for body text and headlines.

One big change is that the almanac, which used to be in three separate monthly sections, is now a single section at the start of the magazine. Why have you made this change?
CT: The Almanac sections at the start of each month have always been the space in which we gave an overview of the month’s news, to highlight smaller stories, funny facts and mind-blowing stats. They were introductions to the month’s news, but we felt it made more sense to have one single introduction to the news of the quarter rather than three. It creates a jumping-off point that gives an overview of the whole period at the start of the issue.

The magazine feels different! Why have you changed the paper?
This is all about readability. Our old textured paper stock, while very beautiful, was very absorbent and soaked up a lot of ink, meaning that, a bit like blotting paper, the text, graphics and images couldn’t be reproduced as crisply and accurately as we wanted. We’ve searched for a long time to find a new high-quality paper that can reproduce our colourful images and infographics with striking vibrancy and sharpness, yet still has the environmental credentials that are important to us and our readers.

Other changes are smaller, such as tweaks to the fonts and colours. Can you tell us about a couple of the smaller design tweaks you’ve made?
‘Antonia’ is our new text font, replacing ‘Miller’ – it’s similar to our original font, ‘Clarendon’, and has a larger x-height (the size of a letter such as ‘x’ or ‘o’ in proportion to taller letters such as ‘d’ or ‘f’), which makes it more readable. We’ve also had another look at our colour palette to make sure that everything works well with the new paper – removing darker backgrounds and brightening everything up to make the most of the capabilities of the new paper stock. Another change is to our long-form features, where we are introducing more explanatory boxes, maps and graphics which help add context and summary to these stories.

Issue 54 of Delayed Gratification is available to purchase from our online shop

Posted on Friday, July 5th, 2024 - Categories: App Issues, App recommends – collections, Extras, Interviews.