Production Type and Large’s confident and consistent designs for electronic music mag Trax

Set up in 1997, Trax magazine is one of France’s leading electronic music and culture magazines. Last year type Paris-based foundry Production Type took over the art direction of the magazine with Jean-Baptiste Levée at the helm. They brought in Paris and Brussels-based studio Large to help with the design and now with eight issues under its belts the team continues to build on its original re-design.

The mag’s logo was drawn by Jean-Baptiste and its heavy, bold appearance sets the tone for the rest of the publication. Trax’s layout operates on a “flexible system composed of visual blocks” that accompany the reader as they flick through the pages. “We wanted to focus on the rhythm, so built spaces for visual confrontation between the different colours and typographic elements,” says Large. Treating the spreads like enlarged grids, the pages are interchangeably made up of large rectangle images, chunks of colour and text or used playfully as visual breaks in between articles.

The publication is nearly 20 years old now but Production Type’s art direction makes each issue feel vibrant and fresh. While they have a loose formula for the magazine, there are experimental touches in every edition like the digitised cover for issue 192.