Asterisk magazine

Identity, print design, and website for a new quarterly social sciences magazine. Sample issue topics have covered AI, food, community building, measurement, mistakes, origin stories, and California. To reflect the eclectic content, our inspiration for the identity and magazine layout came from ’70s science fiction, ’80s nuclear disarmament publications, William Hogarth illustrations, and 18th century book design. The articles tend to be complex but with a dose of humor and self reflection, we mirror this with a playful and fluid design. The print magazine won an AIGA 360 award.

The identity pairs the name in a bold sans serif with a hand-drawn asterisk. Each issue gets a new asterisk and the symbols are used throughout the magazine as end marks. Our work for each issue includes commissioning illustrations, image research, and data visualizations. We’ve been able to work with amazing illustrators throughout. 

The website structure is based on the cadence of the print magazine with the landing page image and signature color changing quarterly. Articles are released throughout the quarter and viewers can navigate back through past issues. A useful touch is a sliding bar on the side of the browser that  indicates the length of the article and viewers can highlight and bookmark passages as they read down. The website was created by Marie Otsuka and Minkyoung Kim.