Since our collaboration with Cereal on their first self-published book, These Islands, we had the opportunity to help redesign a number of their printed city guides as well. In March of 2018, Cereal proposed another exciting project—the redesign of Cereal Magazine for the launch of volume 16.
As we approached the project, we understood the impact Cereal had made on the creative community and beyond. With a massive following that loved the magazine for their distinct minimal aesthetic and perspective, we were careful to respect their global readership while assisting Cereal to establish the next evolution of the magazine. It was important to us to understand the core of Cereal, what makes it what it is, as a way to redesign with integrity and reverence for what came before. Whether seen in print or online, the photography approach was one aspect that was distinctly Cereal and iconic to their brand. We wanted to create a design to achieve that same level of thought and simplicity, an iconic design that was distinctly Cereal.
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<h2>Type Treatment</h2>
During the research phase, we observed that most magazine layouts are filled with large contrasting headlines with small text as a way to establish hierarchy. However, when we were mocking up spreads with this type treatment, we found it took away from the calmness and simplicity of the photographs and writing. Through several iterations, we challenged ourselves to create a sense of hierarchy through a different approach — a hierarchy with as minimal amount of type size variations as possible. This resulted in majority of the magazine, from title to body copy, to be set in a serif typeface at 8.5pt and credits/captions set in a 6pt sans serif. We were still able to achieve the page hierarchy through the use of negative space. Another adjustment we made was changing the previously justified paragraph styles to a ragged edge for enhanced readability and adding a line to indicate the end of an article.

Table of Contents — At the start of the project, Cereal wanted to do away with organizing articles by categories (cities, art &amp; design, style, etc.) as it was restricting for the content they wanted to create. Removing the categories lead to a restructuring of the magazine and in turn the table of contents. The new design features a numbering system to keep track of each article along with a restructured layout for the new types of content. Without section breaks between categories, Rosa came up with the concept of page breakers (morning, afternoon, and evening), which we placed at the top of each column.
Interviews Treatment — Among the notes we took looking over the previous issue, we found there was an opportunity to improve the formatting for interviews. We wanted to further distinguish the voices in these articles, between Cereal and the interviewee. While we kept the use of initials for Interviewees, the new design displays Cereal’s dialogue indented and set in italic.
Image Captions — We utilized the two typefaces (serif and sans serif) together in the image captions as a way to differentiate the content. We used arrows to indicate the image in which they were referring to.
Page Breakers — When we designed the page breakers, morning, afternoon and evening, we wanted to visualize the passing of time. Each title is placed with intention, descending along the right edge of the page. A small graphic detail accompanies each reflecting light and the movement of the sun for each of these moments.
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To create simplicity, it often requires the practice of showing restraint. Such is the case for the beginning of the project in setting the foundations of Cereal magazine’s structure. The working file itself must be simplified and well structured, just as a clean kitchen would serve clean food. The foundations of the redesign are structured by a consistent eight column grid; a limit of six type styles/treatments for all varieties of text; and three grey tones.
When we set out to redesign Cereal magazine volume 16, we knew we were only enhancing what was already in existence. The photos and writings of Cereal continue to be the heart and soul of the publication. We simply wanted to elevate the design to match and embrace the content.

Services

Location

Credits

Art Direction

Print

Cereal Magazine

During the start of our studio in 2012, we had the privilege of meeting photographer Gillian Stevens and worked on a number of photoshoots together. Since then, Gillian has been a great friend of the studio and we were thrilled when she launched her self-titled clothing label.
Each of Gillian’s collections is carefully designed with quality and made to last. As a firm believer in slow fashion, Gillian’s products are made with sustainable practices, building close relationships with manufacturers and suppliers.
Since 2020, Gillian had already built a successful base for her brand. Prior to her Fall 2022 collection, she approached us to refine her brand identity to better reflect the quality and intentionality in her clothing line.

From our discovery process, we identified the concept of slowing down as a core theme to the Gillian Stevens brand—to reduce both our speed of consumption as well as our pace of life. This theme became our main source of inspiration as we designed the brand identity.
As we considered the common activities people turn to while seeking a moment of stillness, reading was a clear source of life for many who wanted to slow down.
Our design concept takes inspiration from the timelessness of printed text and the slight variations that appear as a result of ink being pressed into the paper and bleeding into the fibers. Focusing on this detail, we adjusted each letterform to portray this subtle effect to create a wordmark with its own unique personality.
For the brand system, we created a &#8220;tree grid&#8221;, giving the content an organic and unique structure. In this system, groups of content/text are laid out as branches or leaves on a tree. When applying this system to an image, this allows us to play with the placement of the content in relation to the subject in the image (ie. the title sits on top of the elbow of the model).

Credit

Branding

Identity

Gillian Stevens

Started in Vancouver, Canada, Well Kept is a wellness brand that creates natural and sustainable personal-care products for women. With the environment and natural beauty at its core, Well Kept strives to create a community for collective growth and to open dialogue on topics that continue to defy the status-quo of the current beauty standards.
Co-founders Natalie and Emilie started Well Kept as the target audience themselves, trying to find products that were not available at the time. Since 2017, the brand has grown and done very well, but Natalie and Emilie recognized that their current web presence was not reflective of the brand that Well Kept has grown into. Natalie and Emilie reached out to us to tackle their struggles with their website and improve their direct online orders.

Through our early conversations with Emilie and Natalie, we learned that they strive in every part of their brand to be aware of Well Kept’s environmental impact. From the considered formulation of their products to the careful selection of packaging materials, this commitment spurred in us a curiosity around how their new website design could, as a digital entity, also play a part.
Our research tells us that the internet’s carbon footprint is 830 million tons—on par with the aviation industry. The facts left a deep impression on our team and inspired us to look for ways to design more environmentally conscious. For this project, we aimed to reduce energy consumption by using only system fonts, smaller image file sizes, and reduced video content (especially of the auto play variety). We also provided a dark mode version of the site, allowing viewers to save power consumption.
In redesigning the website, one of our main objectives was to provide more product information and greater transparency on how Well Kept is working towards reducing their environmental impact. To work towards these efforts, we included an informative accordion section for each product and an Impact page was created to highlight Well Kept’s sustainability efforts to date.
As an added visual effect, we implemented a raindrop effect that appears on two areas of the homepage when the user hovers over the active block.
While our intentions were earnest, the launched website did not result in a smaller carbon footprint as we had hoped. Despite the results, the experience truly inspired us to continue learning how to design and develop responsibly for all future projects.
As a design studio, we believe there is still a lot more we can do in making these choices. We’ll be taking what we learned from this project to continue improving our best practices within design, as well as the many industries we have the opportunity to work with along the way.

Well Kept

Website Design & Development

2022

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