New Wave Zine is a student-run magazine based at Toronto Metropolitan University centering around stories from marginalized identities with a feminist lens. The magazine features work of a variety of styles, including creative writing, poetry, reporting, photography, and other visual arts. As the Head of Layout and Design, I was tasked to develop the theme and visual identity of the 2022-2023 issue that suited current discourse in the fourth wave of feminism and the brand identity of the magazine.
Thematic Branding Development
After research into current prominent topics surrounding fourth wave feminism, myself and my co-Head of Design and Layout, Sara Belas, decided on the theme of "Glitch Feminism", based on the writings by scholar Legacy Russell and their book of the same name. The term "Glitch Feminism" describes a socio-techno construct revolving around the intersectionality of gender, sexuality and technology. Similarly to how marginalized identities are considered as “errors” in society, "Glitch Feminism" instead seeks to embrace “the glitch” in the online world, where one has the ability to reinvent and define themselves by their choice. The general aesthetics that best represent this concept that we drew inspiration from include futurism, vaporwave, cyberpunk and remix culture. Based off existing graphical assets from the group, we sought to incorporate these new styles into the New Wave brand by introducing an altered colour palette and a new standard typeface as well as gradient and glitch motifs throughout the publication.
Proposed thematic colour palette based on the New Wave social media branding guidelines. The colours were incorporated in the gradient motifs featured throughout the publication.
Layout Design and Illustration
As Head of Design and Layout, I led the art direction for the publication and ensured the thematic visual identity was consistently kept throughout the stories. However, I also had the opportunity to design layouts and illustrate for a few articles myself - all designs were done in Adobe InDesign and were optimized for print production (though the issue was unfortunately never released).
Illustration created in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for the piece, "Freedom in Her Death" by Kyana Alvarez.
Layout design and illustration for poem, "Freedom in Her Death" by Kyana Alvarez.
Layout design for one-page piece by Angelika Toczysk. Illustrations by Abby Swartz.
Layout and graphic design of a two-page spread photography piece by Reema Najjar..
Layout and graphic design of a two-page spread for the Letters from the Editors and Table of Contents pages.
Special thanks to the 2022-2023 New Wave masthead, especially the editoral and design teams, for their contributions to this issue.