Circumference Magazine Redesign
Circumference, a biannual magazine of translation and international culture, began in 2003 as a print journal of poetry in translation, where many big names in the field first got their start. The editors published seven issues over five years, at which point management switched hands, and these editors continued to publish online. As the editors made the move to start their own imprint, Circumference Books, Circumference stopped publishing as of June 2017. However, with the help of a NYFA grant, editors Elina Alter and Michael Barron, and I took up the mantle to start the magazine anew.
The Logo:
For the logo, Occam’s razor. Circles felt a bit too on-the-nose at this point, so we opted for something a little statelier, in the hopes that simpler and stricter typography would command attention and allow the design to fade into the background, allowing readers to focus more on the poetry. To get at the notion of “circumference,” we decided to rotate the initial C on book covers, in social media text posts, and in the background of the homepage, to great effect.
Prior logo iterations
Print Logo (2003)
Web Logo (2012)
Current Logo (2020)
The Book:
The challenge here was to find a way to make the magazine as a whole feel timeless and to generate more cohesion across the font choices, all the while ensuring legibility across languages and offering respect to the original poetry. Quite the challenge to get multiple writing scripts to look as though they were all set in one font, but a worthy one all the same.
Circumference Fall 2020 Print Issue
new version sized down to 5” x 8”
