Supercar
Concept and Assistance in Graphical Aspects

Supercar – A Strong Graphic Identity for The Top Car Magazine

Supercar magazine was first launched in 2002 in an uncrowded section of the market. The magazine was conceived from the very beginning as a niche product aiming at communicating a clear position. We thus chose a graphic approach that was distinct from traditional car publications while remaining rather understated.

Over time the car magazine market diversified and Supercar’s top management noticed the need to change their graphic approach to better communicate the niche positioning of the magazine on the market. In 2004, Supercar defined its identity as a „pour les connaisseurs” collectible aiming at those who love cars, and not at those searching for exclusively useful information on buying a standard vehicle. Supercar started communicating its values as implied by its name, referring to powerful, high performance sports cars. The content of the publication met this concept from the first launch of the magazine. The main columns presented innovative next generation cars, while standard cars were only briefly mentioned in news items about, for instance, the winning of the car of the year title.

Two years after the initial graphical concept was created by Iulian Puiu, Re:ply Creative Director and Art Director, he reconceived the graphics in order to communicate the magazine’s new identity and position. A significant innovation was the cover itself: we replaced the photo of a car (that is a pattern of all car magazines) with an illustration - pointing to the collectible aspect of Supercar. The illustrations made by Bogdan Caruntu were customized for each issue.

A change that made a great difference to the entire magazine was the color range we chose. We limited the color range and chose solid and masculine colors: more black, red and mustard. We added several graphical elements combined with editorial ones that helped guide the readers through the pages of the magazine.

We set a clearer hierarchy of information using color and the size of the titles. We included charts for the additional information and dotted lines as separations. The family of font was chosen depending on the kind of information involved. We chose rational, clean, simple, emotionally neutral fonts for the display. For several areas of the magazine we chose a script font suitable for opinion pieces.

By the time all the graphical changes were made, Supercar was a firmer, more masculine, impetuous magazine. Following the overhaul of the graphical concept, we provided assistance for two more years, and we supervised and improved each issue before going to print.