Volkskrant Magazine

Art direction is important to achieve our innovative goals. We don't settle for an easy template ever, we change templates each week. Especially in our 'theme issues' we experiment with photography and typography. All artwork is unique and created for us. With an extremely small team (one art director and one designer) we customize entire issues. Some fine results: readers review our magazines with high marks in research and on social media. Even better; there is growth in the Saturday subscriptions (this as a big contrast with worldwide newspaper subscriptions) . Advertisers find their way to Volkskrant Magazine. 

As a creative team we learned its possible making a free spirited magazine for a large crowd (950.000!) with a bit of an 'experimenting-magazine feel'

Create unique weekly issues:

-Each week its a challenge to create a surprising and fresh cover design with original artwork. Cover design is an ace way to start intriguing storytelling and to stand out from our competitors. It also creates a way to connect with the reader that likes to share the cover on social (prefferable with a pic of their breakfast).

Create theme issues:

• July 2016 The Summer Issue.
  Theme: Time. Because we have everything except time. We only use original artwork specially commioned by Volkskrant Magazine. This entire issue was in cooperation with talented illustrator Paul Faasssen. But also photographers Daniel Cohen en Jouk Oosterhof contributed series. 
• September 2016 Design Issue. 
• Theme: A tribute to the 87 year old designer Wim Crouwel (interview). 
• The cover was a playful pastiche on his famous stampdesign out of 1976. In this issue we used his typefaces throughout the whole magazine: the Gritnik and the Archetype (specially made for an Oldenburg exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum)
• December 2016. The annually Interview Issue is the issue with the people that were important for that specific year.

Every week we try to accommodate the reader with an unique reader and design experience. As we all know our weekends are (to) full of activities, but how do we seduce the reader to pick up Volkskrant Magazine first. That's our weekly dare 

We like our reader to get addicted to our brand and give them the luxury paper experience: their 'saturday morning' shot. Storytelling and being creative is king. All artwork is commisioned by Volkskrant Magazine. To find the balance in surprise and habit is our weekly challenge. For this reason we experiment a few times per year and we create 'themes issues'. In subject and excecution we dont wanna think in limits, although, there is an important element here: it has to appeal to a big Dutch audience; 950.000 readership on saturday