Manifest Magazine

From Jonathan: When I got this job, I was so incredibly excited. In my time at school, I had loved designing for print. Designing layouts and working with the all-beautiful grids is my love language. Leaving school I was a little bummed that I had fallen in love with such a niche and arguably dying industry. So when the opportunity came to work on the test zine issue of this new magazine, I jumped for joy and tried to play it cool as I said yes.

When it came to the layout, I wanted to keep it clean and sharp so as not to distract from the content, while keeping it interesting enough to appeal to the creatives that will be purchasing the product.

With a folder packed with text and photos that were asked to be shown in their full glory, I chose to work with a 4-column grid. Because of the smaller size of the zine (A5) and the request for full-bleed photographs, I didn't want the text to crowd the spreads; so I limited the copy width to 3-columns. This choice made the copy much more legible than a full page of text or splitting the text into two columns. Along with allowing more room for the content to breathe, the extra column of white space pays homage to the books on art that many artists are familiar with. It also allows for more dynamic and flexible spreads when it comes to introducing pull-quotes and bringing images across the fold. Finally, to polish it off, I typeset the content to get that silky-smooth edge of text.