History Today (Front covers)

A publication I continue to design to date, History Today is an illustrated history magazine published in London. The magazine covers all periods and regions, showing traditional narrative history alongside new research and historiography. The magazine itself has a long history, first being published in 1951. They have fairly healthy subscriber and newsstand sales, and also publish in digital forms.

I’ve gradually refreshed the look of the magazine over the last couple of years with some good workaday fonts, such as Brioni and Fedra Sans. I’ve also tried to push for a more contemporary visual look. However, due to the nature of the content, it’s sometimes hard to balance what is often serious content with the need to be visible on newsstands. It’s an interesting tension that many publishers have to test out for themselves.

I also advised that the mag should be put together with the Adobe CS suite and Macs instead of the PC’s (remember QuarkXpress?), that were formerly installed. This has worked well and it means it’s easier to reformat issues for the History Today digital editions.

I’ll soon be adding some inside pages from the magazine to the site.