NewsGraphic Design

Elephant magazine gets a trunk load of new design to mark its next chapter

Created with London-based studio Kellenberger-White, Elephant magazine’s new design marks the next chapter for the global quarterly art and culture magazine, with a change to the logo, page design and paper stock. The logo was the starting point for the new art directors, who took a decidedly literal reading of the magazine’s title and visited the elephant enclosure at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire for inspiration.

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Elephant magazine issue 32 cover featuring a person with shoulder-length orange hair against a blue background, with "Perfect Me, Perfect You" as the cover line

"We watched how they move, how they behave together, how they use the trunk as a tool," the designers said. "Naughty Elephants Squirt Water—not only a mnemonic (NESW), perhaps. We took this as a suggestion for our approach to designing Elephant’s new graphic identity. Later that day, on a building site near our studio in East London, we tried to create letterforms by squirting water on the ground. After a few days of experimenting and elephant-infused acting, we’d found our direction."

The design also includes the crunchily cutting-edge typeface Agipo, from Radim Peško.

Issue 32, which is out this month, is the first to be art directed by Kellenberger-White, and takes perfection as its research subject, speaking with artists such as Kate Cooper, Jo Longhurst and Eva O’Leary—whose Redhead (Amie) was selected for the cover—about the hooks and pitfalls of perfection. For Perfect Me, Perfect You the magazine asks: "Is perfection troubling us now more than ever?"

"Artists are well placed to explore this idea," it continues, "offering us glossy images of the perfection we crave and revealing the trick for what it is. In these images, we see acts of violence, oppression and pure emptiness. We see the human falling short again and again. But we also see moments of hope. If we aren’t chasing perfect, what possibilities are we free to chase?"

Elephant has also recently launched elephant.art, a global new website that features many regular features—including 5 Questions, Studio Visits and Sunday Read—alongside video interviews, digital image galleries and new series that explore artist process and art scenes in different cities around the world.

Person with vibrant copper-red shoulder-length hair against a blue sky, featured on Elephant magazine's Issue 32 cover exploring themes of perfection
Open spread from Elephant magazine showing illustrated pages titled "The Perfect Partner" with a stylised red chilli pepper and "The Perfect Animal (and Vegetable)" with a purple aubergine
Open pages of Elephant magazine showing "Perfect Me Perfect You" article title alongside a close-up image of a mouth with braces and a sculptural purple element covering the lower face
Spread from Elephant magazine showing the new "aa" logo on the left page and typography samples with Arabic script on green and blue backgrounds on the right page
Open pages from Elephant magazine showing research imagery and article text with photographs of figures in red and blue clothing and purple sculptural forms
Two pages from Elephant magazine Issue 32 featuring colourful pop-art style illustrations with bold graphic elements and textured backgrounds
Open pages of Elephant magazine showing text columns with a quote and two black and white photographs of artists discussing perfection
Open pages of Elephant magazine showing "Denmark's Got Tal R" article with colourful illustration of a red building interior with geometric shapes and figures on the right page
Double-page spread from Elephant magazine featuring multiple photographs on the left alongside Russian-language text on the right page
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