25 Songs: a preview of The New York Times Magazine music issue

This Sunday, The New York Times Magazine will release “a one-time spectacular” titled 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going. The issue looks at the future of music and contains interviews with and essays on the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Margo Price, Pharrell Williams and Wilco. The issue is a visual treat – notably the photos of Pharrell taken by French artist JR and Kendrick Lamar illustrated by Jesse Draxler.

We asked design director and Here 2016 speaker Gail Bichler to tell us more about the special issue:

“Our music issue revolves around a playlist of 25 songs (and one ‘bonus track’), devised by 26 notable writers. The playlist takes a deep dive into where pop music is today and where it may head next. Our deputy art director, Jason Sfetko, who headed up the design for this issue, drew visual inspiration from letterpress printed rock concert posters. We liked the immediacy of the approach on these posters and the typographic quirks and irregularities that come from combining different letterpress typefaces.

For the purposes of our design, we used varying weights of New Grotesk Round designed by Henrik Kubel and accentuated the bold colour found on these posters. The cover of the print issue is a gradation of two fluorescent inks meant to simulate the effect of split fountain fades used in letterpress printing. Inside, the pieces snake through the issue in a way that references a stream of music.

The interactive version of the issue, designed by Linsey Fields and Rodrigo de Benito Sanz reinterprets the print use of type and colour particularly well and allows readers to hear 30-second clips of each of the songs.”

The online version can be viewed here