JUNKTURE Magazine
JUNKTURE Magazine is a digital sports and pop culture magazine. Their content provokes readers to think differently about their favourite cultural topics and consider them in new ways. I worked with JUNKTURE to build their brand from the ground up - from creating their visual identity, designing their magazine, to building and launching their responsive website.
CHALLENGE
Determine the brand’s positioning and the customers they serve.
OUTCOME
A focused brand strategy and product that differentiates JUNKTURE from other content sites, making it stand out from the clutter.
SCOPE OF PROJECT
Brand Identity
Art Direction
Web Design & Development
Editorial Design
DEVELOPING THE STRATEGY
The project was initiated after a brief conversation with JUNKTURE’s founder, David Stol. A comprehensive strategy session was conducted in-person over a period of two days, where we surfaced challenges and discussed the immediate obstacles the brand would face. Chiefly, how would JUNKTURE be any different from all the other content sites already out there?
We conducted audits on sites in the same vertical, as well as related markets. What we discovered was that the majority of content produced by the competition focused on immediate reactions. Since their daily publication schedules demand a quick turnaround, their writers only have time to consider and write their initial thoughts.
JUNKTURE could be different by zooming out; providing readers with a big-picture view and thus a new way of looking at their favorite cultural topics. Packaged in a digital magazine released monthly, this format would afford writers more time to digest the material and come up with new insights and conclusions.
UNDERSTANDING THE USERS
Quality, not quantity. JUNKTURE Magazine is for readers who want to consider things from new angles, in greater detail and context. To understand the needs of these customers, we created unique user profiles to represent the range of readers. This painted a clear picture of their demographics, psychographics, needs and wants.
DEFINING THE BRAND
Through a series of exercises in the strategy session, we were able to distill and refine the key characteristics of the brand. This defined the brand’s personality: how it should look, sound, and act.
THE LOGO
Once the creative tone and strategy was set, we went to work to design a logo that reflected the major brand attributes. We wanted to create a simple yet symbolic mark; a logo that was versatile across all sizes and applications.
MAGAZINE DESIGN
With the target demographic in mind, we decided that a mobile-first approach to design would be the most appropriate. JUNKTURE Magazine is meant to be read on the go.
WEBSITE DESIGN
A simple user experience. The goal for the website was to make it easy for readers to find and read any magazine volume in JUNKTURE’s catalogue. The landing page presents users with a swipe-able carousel of all the monthly issues while making JUNKTURE’s podcast and contributor bios a click away.
“Having the opportunity to work with Justin in the creation of JUNKTURE Magazine has been one of the great privileges of my career thus far. His dedication and consistency to his work is incomparable, while his attention to detail offered the magazine an air of professionalism to its inaugural issue. From helping to guide our brand since its initial conception, to designing each individual issue, there’s no one else I would’ve trusted to undertake a project so personal to me.”
David Stol
Editor-in-chief, JUNKTURE
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