Metal Hammer Magazine Redesign 2018

Metal Hammer is one of the most trusted and well known magazines and brands in the music industry and in 2018 I was tasked with coming up with a fresh new-look for the magazine. The brief from the senior editorial team was to create a new modern vibe for the magazine that would take the brand into a new phase but still importantly keep some of its rock and metal brand values. Myself with the editorial have evolved the magazine to suit the ever changing industry and more importantly the readers. The reimagined Metal Hammer reflects what we feel our readers want more of - bigger and better stories, high quality writing, premium design and exclusive extras. After several weeks of filtering ideas I created the magazine aesthetic to compliment the editorial content. Modern fonts with solid use of white space were focal points while returning to some core design skills, grids and structures that have been eroded over the years. I wanted to keep regulars easy to work on to free up time for myself to be more creative in other areas such as cover and features. I also wanted to emphasis the way our features look with big opening pages that pull people in. Images in general are bigger throughout to so show off the talented photographers and artists. The first issue of its release featured Slipknot on the cover using a John McMurtrie photograph and an exclusive illustration by Tom J Newell. The magazine was presented with an exclusive poster of artwork by Mark Van De Beek, a book of quotes by Slipknot given as a gift to readers and a 15-track CD.