Dazed & Confused №286

Born in 1991 as a student zine and now the flagship publication of an international media enterprise, Dazed has undergone more than a few changes over the years. One recent change – to the magazine’s design – came in 2020 during the tenure of editor-in-chief Isabella Burley. Creative director Jamie Reid and designer Eva Nazarova’s redesign of the publication debuted in issue #268.
Set in ABC Dinamo’s Monument Grotesk and Klim’s Untitled Serif, the typography is brash, often tightly spaced, and sometimes deliberately breaks “the rules.” Descenders collide with letters on the line below and dark text is placed over dark sections of photos, making reading difficult. Monument Grotesk is employed in many sizes and styles, including Semi-Mono and, according to the magazine’s colophon, styles Dinamo custom-made for Dazed. The stark, industrial shapes of Monument are used to great effect. The more extreme, anti-design aspects of the layouts are mostly limited to headlines and short pull quotes. Body copy, usually arranged in justified columns and set in Untitled Serif, is handled more conservatively.