Leo Jung. Photo by Thomas Bollier.

As a veteran editorial designer, Leo Jung rejects a signature style, preferring instead to let each magazine story idea inform the creative direction. “If there's anything that sticks out about my work,” he says, “I would hope that people see my work as simple, thoughtful, and unexpected.” His concept-driven approach has won him critical praise. As the creative director of California Sunday and the live-performance Pop-Up Magazine, the San Francisco–based creative director has won awards from the Art Directors Club, the Society of News Design, and the Society of Publication Designers, to name but a few.

As a quiet and introverted kid growing up in a small town outside Montreal, Jung recalls how his creative side helped draw him out of his shell. But as the son of Chinese immigrants, he also felt pressure to make realistic professional choices. “Creativity is a nice hobby,” he says, “but it’s not essentially a career that most Asian parents would recommend.” So he devised a long-term plan, first getting a business degree before attending art school. “I wanted to differentiate myself from everybody else by understanding what target markets were and what your client wants,” he says. Jung’s strategy worked: After earning degrees in both business and art, he landed his first job at multidisciplinary design firm Concrete Design Communications, in Toronto. Editorial roles followed at such revered publications as the New York Times Magazine and WIRED.

After working at magazines with established design standards, Jung embraced the challenge of starting the look of California Sunday from scratch. "At WIRED and at the Times, it was about maintaining their reputation as forward-thinking magazines. At Cal Sunday," Jung says, "it was about building a reputation." A new magazine meant that he could determine a look and feel in keeping with founder Douglas McCray's vision for a "cinematic" reading experience. To that end, Jung often uses image-heavy, multi-page openers to keep readers visually engaged as they turn the pages. “We made a conscious decision to say that photography is going to lead, and design is going to come second, as opposed to design being the container filled with photography.”

Alex Hunting.

When it comes to the size of typography or imagery, there’s never a middle ground for Alex Hunting: “I like things quite large or quite small,” the art director says. So in 2016, when he got the job to redesign the iconic lifestyle publication Kinfolk, he had to go big — or, at least, bigger, by expanding its format from book dimensions to magazine proportions. More room also gave him the chance to rework the grid for greater variety, complexity, and flexibility in his layouts. “It was about adding more pacing to get readers to engage more with the content,” he says.

Like many graphic designers, Hunting thought he wanted to be a fine artist. But after sussing out the stiff competition as an undergraduate student at the University of the Arts London, he decided to explore other creative options. By chance, he landed in a graphic design class — and was immediately hooked. An internship with Jeremy Leslie, the founder of magCulture, stoked his passion for editorial design. Another apprenticeship — under Matt Willey, now a Pentagram partner — helped him develop his penchant for bold type treatments.

Today, Hunting’s London-based creative agency, Alex Hunting Studio, specializes in print and digital publications. He has art directed and redesigned a number of titles, including This Orient, on Middle Eastern art and culture; Rapha Mondial, a custom lifestyle magazine for the cycling brand; and Sabato, a Belgian newspaper supplement. Most recently, for Kinfolk’s tenth anniversary, he gave the magazine another refresh using InDesign — this time commissioning a full Kinfolk family of type. “We’ve done lots of stuff to inject loads of character,” he says, “like beautiful ligatures in the display type.”

Mohammed Ahmed.

Casa Magazines owner Mohammed Ahmed knows what sells. He may not be able to name the celebrity or model on any given magazine cover, but he instinctively knows where to place a periodical for maximum browsing exposure. “All the famous magazines, I lie flat down,” he says, as he points to the locations of the titles that consistently sell well. Fortuitously situated on a corner block in Manhattan’s West Village, Casa Magazines is a news shop with a cult following — a haven for lovers of print, with a very loyal and creative clientele composed of tourists, celebrities, editors, and creatives of all stripes.

Casa’s cozy interior is teeming with magazines, and Ahmed knows where every single issue lives. He recalls his vast inventory of over 2,500 titles, individual periodical placements, and number of copies sold with precision. He is reluctant to name a favorite magazine or what makes a particular cover compelling personally, because he is less interested in the object as it is, and more invested in having these printed marvels leave his shop in customers’ bags. “Whatever sells [the most] and fast is the good one,” he says, with a smile.

Like many small businesses, Casa’s sales were hit hard during the pandemic (Casa survived its mandatory closure by the city through fundraising efforts of its many supporters). Though Ahmed does share that the decline of print culture is not new — the store’s continued success is evidence of a solid fanbase, and Casa is adapting. Collaborations with his clients are common, and the creative community shows their dedication to Casa through branded merchandise and exclusive magazine launch events, al fresco. Online, Casa has also become a niche influencer, with nearly 30,000 followers. Ahmed is committed to his customers, getting them the imported magazines they want and need, and his community responds with their loyalty.

Miranda Dempster. Photo by Emily Andrews.

As the editorial product design director at New York Magazine, Miranda Dempster led a team redesign of NYMag.com along with its digital verticals The Cut, The Strategist, and Curbed, giving each a distinctive identity that tied back to the legacy brand. It was her first foray into product design — she’d spent the previous five years as an art director for the print magazine —and her fresh eye proved to be an asset. “My lack of awareness about what is or isn't possible has really been helpful in terms of not feeling like things should be limited because nobody else does it that way,” she says.

In her designs for The Cut, for instance, Dempster limited the number of stories on the homepage in favor of white space — bucking trends at a time when just about every other digital publication was trying to cram as many headlines as possible above the fold. In combination with dynamic type treatments, the result was a vertical that felt premium and, though automated, looked custom. Using photos in a square format proved to be another visual signature that bucked the trend. “Whatever everybody else is doing — and whatever is considered the typical solution for something — try to think of a different, contrasting approach,” she advises, “because that will be a point of difference.”

For every vertical, Dempster, who is now Vox Media’s senior design director of audience and consumer experience, developed autonomous visual identities that leverage typography for contrast and hierarchy. Variations in density, scale, and font styles create a “scannable visual texture,” as Dempster explains. “We just felt that type was the most powerful thing in terms of building a suite of brands that felt trustworthy when a lot of digital media is not trustworthy,” she says.  

Carl De Torres.

Carl De Torres specializes in turning hard-to-grasp subjects into abstract illustrations and deeply researched infographics. “When a subject is highly complex,” he says, “that's when I know it's worth doing.” That benchmark has led his San Francisco–based storytelling studio StoryTK to partner with clients including IBM, Apple, Nature, and Wired magazines to distill heady concepts like quantum computing and DNA data into smart graphics.

As a kid growing up in southern California, De Torres remembers being fascinated by hieroglyphics. “The idea that you could tell stories using little pictures was amazing to me,” he says. Later on, he developed an understanding of the power of abstract representation to communicate processes and principles that are invisible to the eye, especially in technology and the sciences. What he didn’t learn about design at the California College of the Arts (CCA), the self-described bibliophile taught himself through the monographs of design greats like Josef Müller-Brockmann, Yusaku Kamekura, Erik Nitsche, and Anton Stankowski. “They completely blurred the lines between art, design, illustration, and communication,” he says of his influences. “They are ‘graphic designers’ in the purest sense of the word.”

De Torres still consults books more than the Internet to create his eye-catching illustrations — and cautions other designers from falling victim to passing trends. “We don’t do mood boards,” he says. “We’re all fired up by stuff that exists out there, but there are a lot of people who mistake creativity and inspiration for plagiarism.” He ensures originality by “always being inspired, first and foremost, by the content,” and figuring out ways to illustrate it in subtly thought-provoking ways. “I don't like telling viewers what to think,” he says. “I prefer to have a conversation.”