Komplex – Digitisation of an Architecture Periodical

In order to reach a bigger audience, shorten the publication process and deliver an interactive and immersive storytelling around architectural topics, the real estate developer Halter AG asked Thomas Berger and me to develop and design an online media strategy and a brand redesign for their magazine Komplex.

Ideation and Strategy

In the ideation phase, we could rely on a solid design brief that included a series of strategic projections that would match our own research. Notwithstanding, the client had underestimated its potential to reach a broader public in the younger demographic. We could convince the company’s chairman that this upgraded form of business communication would have a postive effect on his need to attract young talent. Also, the expansion to more digital channels and the integration of rich architectural content such as zoomable vector files and webGL based 3D models became should allow us to give the digital discourse of architecture issues a lively and credible foundation.

– The new magazine needs to become hyper flexible in terms of storytelling, allowing highly customised page themes to create a rich user experience for a demanding audience
– With the help of our technical partners, we drafted a CMS architecture able to integrate all kinds of cutting edge frontend frameworks as well as the workflows to integrate in the classical publishing process.

We proposed a comprehensive publishing strategy including
– art direction support to help develop the editorial process
– the production of a print product containing the essence of one year worth of content
– a custom build CMS to allow content publication from all creative departments of the company
– the setup and management of a new social media channel on Instagram
– a progressive web app as a content teaser and communication touchpoint for employees and clients

Design Process

1. Corporate Design Refresh

We shared our clients belief that while being transformed into a digital platform for contemporary architectural discourse, the brand needed an updated typography as well as a new visual communication concept.

We chose to build our typographical system on two contemporary fonts by Francois Rappo, one of the most recognised swiss font designers of our decade. Combining the Plain, our main font with two auxiliary fonts, the Practice for continuous text and the Andalé Mono for meta information boxes, we built a clear and relatively strict but still relaxed structure to support a both flexible and precise layout for both print and online.

Logotype Proposal

Font SystemLayout and Grid System

2. The new print magazine

Over the past 10 years, the magazine’s content grew more diverse and dense with a tendency to loose its clear message and original generosity.  Thanks to the new strategy, channeling most of the content to the digital sphere, the print magazine can recover its original essentiality and quality.

This generosity would allow to combine both a more understated brand experience and a more focused distillation of the content and its message.

Cover Variations – adaptable to the magazine’s main theme

First two folds with summary

Layout Example for Feature

3. Flexible and rich architectural content

Becoming the main functional node in the communication web offered by the client,  the online platform has to maintain its expression as the spearhead in construction and real estate development not only by sporting a understated and precise design but also by leveraging available technology to be able to deliver immersive storytelling and informative positions. We therefore engaged in advanced technical specifications and prototyping of workflows and frontends that would allow cutting edge 3D visualisation, integrated in the narrative line.

– We established a 2 weeks process for the custom frontend development of long read articles to allow specific storytelling immersion and individual interactive element such as 3D Objects with webGL, Google Streetview and Google Maps.