Celebrating New York Times Magazine’s stunning bespoke type

25 May / 2018 / Scanner /

In 2015 The New York Times Magazine embarked on the most extensive redesign in its history. Gail Bichler, the magazine’s Design Director, commissioned an entirely new suite of typefaces as well as customized typography which has been used in the magazine’s covers, features and special issues. The exhibition “The New York Times Magazine – Type: 2015-Present” at the Type Director’s Club includes covers, spreads, and full special issues.

The focus is on typographic highlights since the redesign including the magazine’s new typefaces and the thinking behind these faces. Also featured is some of the magazine’s most powerful imagery.

To accompany the show the NYT Magazine has produced a small publication that collects together some of its bespoke type highlights created since its 2015 redesign. The booklet, NYT Mag Type, has been produced through Newspaper Club and features examples of the magazine’s sans and serif faces, alongside a wide selection of more expressive type designs created for specific issues.

“As Design Director Gail Bichler writes in the introduction, the design of the NYT Magazine does not rely on ornamentation, but instead comes out of the words contained inside its pages – ‘the stories and ideas those words represent. Typography gives tone and voice to those words’. As part of the Magazine’s redesign that was carried out two years ago, Henrik Kubel of A2-Type was commissioned to create a suite of custom typefaces – ‘serif and sans serif fonts that felt unique and modern’ he writes” reports Creative Review.

The New York Times Magazine – Type: 2015-Present is at the Type Director’s Club, 347 West 36th in New York until 5 September.