When it comes to a beautifully printed publication, we’ll admit it – sometimes we are quite happy to judge a book by its cover. In this case it is the newly resurrected Monotype magazine The Recorder, which boasts a killer foil blocked cover that just screams look at me, love me, take me home already! Redesigned by Birmingham art director Luke Tonge, the twice-yearly magazine focuses on “the wider implications of typography and how it contributes to a broader cultural context.” Yeah yeah, so far so thinky, but it’s the look of the magazine that has us intrigued – particularly that cover. The insides show more potential than accomplishment, but this is only the first issue after all.
All ready it’s apparent that Tonge’s greatest challenge is going to be balancing the subject matter with clean design – typography is actually a real bear to illustrate without other illustrations and photographs to play off of. Fortunately, he’s also demonstrated an impressive ability to do that with more prosaic subjects in magazines.
The entire first issue of The Recorder is printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite. It can be purchased here.
