New Work: Radar Magazine

Luke Hayman and Radar design director Kate Elazegui have collaborated on the redesign of Radar magazine that launches with the July/August issue, on newsstands today.

Founded and edited by Maer Roshan, Radar covers the modern media pop circus in all its glory: stars, scandals, crime, fashion, sex, money, entertainment. In publishing circles, the magazine has achieved its own kind of notoriety, relaunching twice since its 2003 debut. The current iteration, its third, launched in 2007, and it also publishes a popular website, RadarOnline. The stops and starts of the magazine left its look largely up for grabs, and the brief for the redesign was tricky.

Radar’s focus is somewhat similar to Vanity Fair—celebrity mixed with serious journalism—but unlike VF, it is not part of the establishment, and its tone is humorous, mocking and more than a little absurd. At the same time it has broken substantial investigative stories (“Gangs of Iraq”) and was nominated for a National Magazine Award for general excellence in 2008.

This mix of the serious, the savvy and the superficial presented a challenge for the designers. For inspiration Hayman and his team looked at legendary anti-establishment publications from the 1960s and 70s: the countercultural newspaper The East Village Other; the satirical magazines Private Eye and Oz; and the classic Nova that successfully combined pop culture, politics and fashion.

The resulting look is antic, fun and flexible enough to accommodate all sorts. Typographically the magazine is bizarre and eclectic, using a varied collection of fonts to create a madcap spirit. Cooper Black is employed for its Pop touch; FF Elementa, a typewriter font, for its ephemeral immediacy and implied journalistic integrity. Plantin is used for the text font and in bold condensed for headlines. Layouts make use of more straight illustration and information graphics, along with the outrageous photo composites the magazine is known for.

Hayman and Elazegui worked to expand and refine the hierarchies and structures of the magazine’s departments. The List, a spread of amusing charts and diagrams on current topics, was moved from the back to the front. Incoming, the previous front-of-book catchall, has become a section of news stories and social trends, and its Species feature spotlighting a personality type has been given over to a full spread that functions as a kind of pinup-cum-diagnostic chart. In Play, a section that previously appeared in some issues, has been permanently reinstated to focus on culture, books, music, movies, television and politics.

Project Team: Luke Hayman, Shigeto Akiyama