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Magazine / Graphic Design — 2008 · Private Client

Echo

The cover of the maiden issue: a man in a rust-orange shirt, dark jeans and white trainers sits on a tall wooden stool against a white ground cut through by diagonal red and navy bands, a red lozenge at the top reading MAIDEN ISSUE beside SEPTEMBER 2008, and the masthead ECHO set in a distressed white stencil on a red block with magazine beneath it and the strapline “it’s all about you” in yellow script. A red contents column runs down the right edge listing UP CLOSE & PERSONAL chris attoh, REGULARS love is in the air and FEATURE prof andam, the last with a small inset photograph of a graduate in blue and gold.

The first edition of Echo, a lifestyle magazine the studio designed and announced in August 2008 for that September: a photographic cover with a stencil masthead and a red contents column, a blackletter feature spread of nine numbered rules round a blue figure on a yellow sunburst, and a pink relationships regular set solid in coral.

The post is an announcement rather than a case study, and it is two sentences long: Revival had designed the first edition of the Echo lifestyle magazine, it was due “sometime in September this year”, and “these are some of the pages from the magazine”. Nothing else about the commission is stated — no publisher, editor, print run or frequency — so the listing carries a Private Client and the bare Ghana the studio works from, and this post is the only place the magazine appears in the archive at all.

The date does not rest on the blog. The cover prints its own: a red lozenge reading MAIDEN ISSUE beside SEPTEMBER 2008, which is what an August announcement of a September issue predicts. The cover also carries the issue’s contents column, and that is how more of the magazine is known than was ever shown — an up-close interview with Chris Attoh at page 18, the love is in the air regular at page 27, and a feature on Prof Andam at page 11. The regular is listed at 27 on the cover while the page published from it carries the number 29.

The three pages published are a deliberate range rather than a set of lookalikes. The cover is photographic, built on diagonals and a distressed stencil masthead. Page 28 is typographic and illustrated: a blackletter headline, a flat blue figure on a yellow sunburst, nine numbered rules hung around it, and a strip of four comic panels at the foot. Page 29 is a text page — a pink regular carried entirely in coral body copy, opening on the question of whether a pocket is empty, with a scrollwork-and-hearts margin down the right edge. Between them they cover the three jobs a magazine designer actually has: a cover that sells the issue, a feature that carries an idea, and a page that carries words.

Only these three pages were ever released. The studio went on to post other graphic-design work through 2008 and 2009, but no later post shows the finished issue or mentions Echo again, so the listing keeps the announcement’s own framing — some of the pages — rather than implying a full table of contents was published. Nor is any software claimed: unlike most of the studio’s 2008 posts, this one carries no labels at all, so the page names no tools.

The entry has been revised since — its feed record shows an update in October 2012 — but nothing about the work is dated from that. The announcement is August 2008 and the cover says September 2008, and those two agree.

The source post is on blogspot — Coming soon this year!!!, 21 August 2008.

The cover of the maiden issue: a man in a rust-orange shirt, dark jeans and white trainers sits on a tall wooden stool against a white ground cut through by diagonal red and navy bands, a red lozenge at the top reading MAIDEN ISSUE beside SEPTEMBER 2008, and the masthead ECHO set in a distressed white stencil on a red block with magazine beneath it and the strapline “it’s all about you” in yellow script. A red contents column runs down the right edge listing UP CLOSE & PERSONAL chris attoh, REGULARS love is in the air and FEATURE prof andam, the last with a small inset photograph of a graduate in blue and gold.
Page 28, a full-page feature headed The Nine Rules Of Being Human in a blackletter display face across the top of a cream page: a flat blue silhouette of a standing man sits at the centre against a yellow sunburst, ringed by nine numbered notes that begin YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY and end YOUR ANSWER LIES INSIDE YOU, a vertical ECHO tab down the left margin, and a blue-bordered panel of four comic-strip illustrations of women with speech bubbles along the bottom, the page number 28 set in a red square at the lower left.
Page 29, the love is in the air regular: a pale pink spread headed love is in the air in large pink display type at the top, a vertical RELATIONSHIPS tab at the upper right, several paragraphs of body copy set solid in coral red, a band of swirls and small hearts running down the right margin, four small photographs of couples arranged along the bottom, and the page number 29 set at the lower right.