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At the end of 2017, I was asked by Egmont Publishing to join the team of their market-leading boys' magazine, Toxic, as Development Editor. My brief for this six-month project was to carry out a complete review of the magazine, then implement any changes that were required as a result. I was also responsible for day-to-day editing and team management while a new permanent editor was recruited. We came up with a bright, exciting redesign of the magazine, with special emphasis on including new and surprising feature formats to add more variety. The pages below were created by the whole team.
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We added value and variety by packing pages with sidebars, boxes and extra elements.
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The team were always trying out new ways of presenting familiar facts and information.
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Nothing is allowed to be boring in the Toxic world – this spread of space facts might have been dry in any other title, but the addition of a floating sock and a load of cheeky copy made sure it wasn't.
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Funny animals are a big part of Toxic's DNA, and they don't come much funnier than the capybara.
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We tried to broaden the Toxic world beyond the main entertainment brands and into other areas that the readers had told us they liked.
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At the end of the project, I compiled a comprehensive editorial manifesto that brought together the development work and reader surveys we had done.
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My initial design concept for the new look.
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We looked at hundreds of different new logo options, before eventually deciding to leave it pretty much as it was. Life's like that sometimes
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