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.
We added value and variety by packing pages with sidebars, boxes and extra elements.
The team were always trying out new ways of presenting familiar facts and information.
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.
Funny animals are a big part of Toxic's DNA, and they don't come much funnier than the capybara.
We tried to broaden the Toxic world beyond the main entertainment brands and into other areas that the readers had told us they liked.
At the end of the project, I compiled a comprehensive editorial manifesto that brought together the development work and reader surveys we had done.
My initial design concept for the new look.
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
