Editorial brand systems

Lola Magazine

Lola is an independent print and online magazine celebrating art and culture in Berlin from an outsider’s perspective. As founding Art Director I created the wordmark and built the design language around it, including a complex editorial system and marketing assets. I single-handedly designed the entirety of the first seven issues.

Identity design
Editorial design
Art direction
Marketing design
Print production

Role: Founding Art Director
Years: 2016–2020
Cadence: Quarterly print
Output: 7 issues + launch system

Identity

The identity for Lola is based around a few simple ingredients: a bold logo; a palette of red, black and white; a simple typographic system; and the decision to work only with the best local photographers. The logo holds at any scale — instantly recognisable on screen or sprayed on a wall across the street — and the palette and the type run unchanged through every spread, poster and social channel.

LOLA sticker on a graffitied utility box in Berlin — bold red square holding its own in the street layer

The Design System

An editorial design system needs enough flexibility to cover a wide variety of content — features, listicles, photo spreads, columns and the standing pages (contents, masthead and the rest) — while still remaining coherent and logical throughout. At Lola, visual storytelling, pacing and restraint were key: images were given a lot of breathing room, and everything locked to a 10-column grid except when an injection of playfulness was needed to create visual interest and rhythm.

Behind the issue · Art directing an editorial project is more than just a complex visual design system — it's also a tightly timebound, often high-pressure project management role. Relationships with photographers (and their subjects), illustrators, print and delivery vendors, plus multiple rounds of proofing and corrections all need to be factored in.

Mark Reeder feature opening spread — 'The Tireless Pioneer of Berlin's Counter Culture' headline left, portrait of Reeder seated in a blue jacket right

Mark Reeder feature mid-spread — central black-and-white portrait flanked by archival photographs of the 80s Berlin scene, with a redacted pull quote on the right page

Mark Reeder feature late spread — 'We have to fight for our right to party' pull quote with three vertical archival images alongside body text

Spreads from issues 1–7

Moderat — 'An Inside View of Their Rad Kingdom', feature opener with band portraits

Moderat continued — black-and-white feature spread with two band members in a sunlit field, pull quote 'We still get very euphoric about our job on stage'

Moderat continued — feature spread with the pull quote 'The music world runs in phases' set above a grid of band and individual portraits

Coco Schumann — 'The Music Kept Him Going', feature opener with portrait and condensed display headline

'Birdwatching: A New Way of Looking at Our City' — Berlin nature essay with sky-and-bird imagery and pull quote

Gurr — 'Tour Diary: On the Road with Garage-Rockers Gurr', a red full-bleed spread with polaroid-style band photographs

Off the page

The launch kit and marketing materials emerged naturally from the design system. The wordmark sits inside its red box on the business cards, and drops the box on any other red surface without losing any impact — t-shirts, coffee mugs and even canine fashion accessories. Promotional material for the launch events allowed a bit more fun with a bolder approach to colour and imagery, without stepping beyond the brand system’s boundaries.

A black labrador sniffing a pallet of LOLA-branded distribution boxes ready for stockists, outside in a Berlin courtyard

Outcome

7 issues between 2016 and 2020, online and offline marketing materials, 8,000 followers on social channels and an identity still on the streets of Berlin today.

Next case study

Exberliner →

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