Matt Willey redesigned the publication’s identity, sourcing inspiration from within the depths of the magazine’s archives. The elegant new design harks back to its covers from the 1970s.
The newly minimalist look is enhanced by Klim Type’s Founders Grotesk sans serif while body copy is set in the foundry’s Heldane Text. The text is broken up by a large clean centre image.
“The design was inspired by the minimalism of older issues of the Review – among them no. 56, published in 1973, which I have been carrying around for the past few months,” explains editor Emily Stokes in a blog post on the Paris Review’s website.
“This summer, when our designer, Matt Willey, first visited the Review’s Chelsea office, he and I were immediately drawn to issue no. 56 as an object,” she continues. “We liked the book’s trim size, small enough that you could hold it open in one hand, and the type, which though not big, was surprisingly legible, dark and fat. The paper felt intimate – textured in a way that seemed to ask to be dog-eared, or even scribbled on.”
The inside pages also mimic this minimalistic and fresh feel with large spaced of text and block, neutral colour backgrounds.
The redesign is the latest in a long list of editorial projects from the Pentagram partner and Port magazine co-founder – who’s also been busy launching new title Inque and redesigning the Big Issue.
