For all of the magazine’s themed issues, the art department strives to develop a look and feel that is specific to the issue’s topic, yet still feels like The Times Magazine. This often involves rolling out a new font. This past Sunday’s Voyages issue was about travel in America. The destinations in the articles weren’t exotic but, rather, familiar places made interesting by the experiences and observations of the writers. With the design, we wanted to develop a visual language that subtly evoked Americana and also felt unique and personal, like the articles themselves. We looked at a variety of travel-related materials: everything from postcards to airline identities to airport-way-finding systems.
We were inspired by the irregular typography on vintage luggage tags and road signs:
We searched for a font that had some quirks and a subtle handmade quality, eventually deciding on a sans serif, created in 2009 by V. H. Fleisher, called Monod. The letter forms are somewhat classic but have inconsistencies that give them a very human feel.
We employed the typeface at varying scales depending on the photography paired with it and the tone of the article. For the Disney and Erie Canal articles, we made the font large, for graphic impact. For Sebastião Salgado’s photo essay on Alaska, we used it small, to complement and highlight the art.
