Magazine Branding- Le Lynx
Design brief
In my 1st year as a industrial design student, we were tasked to create a report on a brand or the founder of a brand. I chose Louis Joseph Cartier and, back then, I was satisfied with my work.
That is until I randomly found that PDF file again and was shocked by my dislike of its layout. I found this to be a good opportunity for a revamp!
What if there was a luxury magazine that covered the same information?
What kind of magazine might it be?
What type of branding could it have?
And how might the layout change for the better?
Moodboard
Photography credit (from left to right, row by row): Danilo Capece, Christian Lambert, Ashley Winkler, Roberto Nickson, Flavien, Kevin Kelly, Hosniye Sadeghi & Emily Underworld
Opportunity & Persona
The internet does not seem to be missing much magazine content, from celeb-focused brands to niche blogs, the digital realm of things is quite saturated. The celeb-focused, and trend driven magazines still offer printed versions of their content. The opportunity then lies among the niche publications that only focus on the print/physical experience of a magazine:
The idea was then to create a physical luxury brand-focused maagazine tragetting young adult women who desire to learn about the history of luxury jewelry from while reducing screentime and staying away from short format content. To drive further decision making, I have created the following persona:
Léa is a 24 years old Canadian woman.
She works as an administrator at the Long Term Care (LTC) home. This ties well with her affinity for the meeting place between the vintage and the new.
Dreaming of the finer things in life, she wants to learn more about how to add touches of refinement in her daily life or simply about the world of luxury as a whole.
Wanting a reliable Canadian source, she is willing to try a new brand of - anything really - as long as it is not yet associated to specific political affiliations, since she is still learning about her own at the moment. But in this screen heavy era, Léa is looking to keep her screentime low and her attention span high.
Photography credit: Evan Wise
Typography & Inspiration
For a more established look, I decided to go with a serif typefaces, Niagara and Times New Roman to be precise. Thus, the main text boxes in the magazine would have the traditional font Times New Roman regular and numbering would be done with the font Times New Roman bold. To add dynanism while still aiming for timelessness, branding textual elements would derive from the Niagara solid font. I introduced the sans-serif font Helvetica Light adding a modernized touch to section titles, without creating a clash with the previously mentionned serif typefaces.
Futhermore, this animal represents independence, determination, clairvoyance, protection, playfulness and, most importantly for this project, beauty and discretion.
I thought it was interesting that the Canada lynx was distinguishable by their ear ear profile, particularly the prominent hair at the tip of its ears.
To create a greater tie with Canadian nationalism, I looked at the country's emblematic animals:
the grizzly bear, the polar bear, the Canada lynx, the beluga, the beaver, the Canada goose, the moose, the elk and the monarch butterfly. I decided to go with the Canada Lynx due to its widespread distribution across the nation and its egnimatic presence in contemporary Canadian popular culture.
Photography credit (from left to right, top to bottom): Environnement Canada (Canadian Wildlife Service), Michael Jerrard, Environnement Canada (Canadian Wildlife Service), Biodome of Montreal (Claude Lafond) & Luc Farrell
Logo development & Colour palette
Here is how the inspiration came together:
Playing with capital characters
Substitute "Y" for the ear shape
Shape modification to improve the "Y" shape recognition & make it match the thick-thin effect of the Niagara font
Playing with letter spacing
Merging more visual components
Altering serifs
Canada Lynx ear profile
Magazine name written in the Niagara font
Logo of the magazine (black & white):
The colour palette for the magazine was developped by taking inspiration from the Pantone® Fashion Color Trend Report For New York Fashion Week (2025), the Behr Canada colour of the year (2025), the Dulux/PPG Canada colour of the year (2025) & the "Earth & Archive" 2025 trending colour palette.
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Magazine layout & Renders
Renders:
Internal layout:
