The Profile Redesign Part 1
Continuing the design-related topic, I’m going to visit and redesign “The Profile” this week.
The Profile with Polina (TP) is a newsletter featuring “the best long-form stories on people and companies in business, tech, sports, entertainment, and more.” I stopped reading most of the news but TP remains to be one of my best sources of entertainment with real people and real stories distilled into one piece. That’s very neat!
You too can read The Profile from here.
Now, let’s get designing!
Since TP’s logo and website share similar visual traits, I will focus mostly on analyzing the logo in this post.
The logo’s color scheme is neutral black and white. It has ample space to the top right and a silhouette of a person to the middle left. The person is shown by a single-stroke white line drawn possibly by a brush reminding me of the famous Rubin’s vase. Perhaps this is intentionally alluding a viewer to multi-dimensionality of TP’s subjects.
There are three different font styles present in TP.
- Serif style for “The”
- Sans serif for “PROFILE WITH POLINA”
- Sans serif for texts in the website (Raleway?)
The most noteworthy font that deserves our attention is the second one utilized for “PROFILE”: Optima (probably). It falls under the classification of sans serif because it doesn’t have decorative feet and flourishes like traditional serif fonts, but the varying width of lines create elegant curves that harken back to the classy style of serifs nevertheless. It is a versatile typeface widely used in cosmetics (i.e. Estée Lauder) to Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The hybrid nature of the typeface appears to be a very sound choice for TP as it seeks wisdom from a broad base of interesting personalities.
Redesigned Logo and Website (Link to the website prototype)
After analyzing the current visual elements and textual content, I’ve decided TP’s brand attributes to be the following: authentic, exclusive, and curious. The new design aims to communicate these core values to the viewers while honoring the spirit and look & feel of the current design.
Authentic because TP stays true to bringing the voices of featured characters and Polina’s.
Exclusive because TP is ruthless and uncompromising when it comes to its content selection.
Curious because TP’s fundamental interest is inquisitiveness about people.
The exclusive and curious traits might cause some frictions when they are housed under the same design roof but this type of internal conflict makes the design truly reflect the complexity of the person behind the scene and brings out the unique voice of its own.
The main typeface used for logo and headers is Aktiv Grotesque. It was designed as a Helvetica killer by Bruno Maag. Bruno’s intention was to “create something that could be used in a corporate environment but has a bit of warmth.” For TP, mainly thin to hairline weights were selected to communicate the exclusivity of upscale brands, and the authoritative voice of a successful journalist.
For paragraphs, Alverata was selected to reflect the depth of content that TP provides. Although it is considered to be in the same typeface family with Optima, Alverata appears to demonstrate a more dramatic visual effect with its robust yet refined form factor. The intention was to zero-in on the spirit of TP through the modern yet classic nature of Alverata, which is inspired by “inscriptional romanesque capitals and arts and designs of 20-21 century.”
The website’s original color scheme of black and white with the accent color of coral/salmon was further enhanced by the introduction of “Power Peach” as its main accent color. Dashes of blue and green were added for secondary and tertiary accents. The layout was modified in a way to elevate the people in the spotlight.
The overall esthetic of the new logo and website is professional and minimalist. It is based firmly on the typographic principles and bold use of vivid colors to visually signal the aura of competence to the visitors.
OK, I think that’s about it for design now. Hopefully, I can write about the developed site next week.
