Bureau Mirko Borsche art directs the new issue of Tunica magazine

“If somebody invites you as a guest art director for a magazine, you want to make it something special, like everybody would want to,” says Mirko Borsche on his studio being asked to art direct the AW17 issue of Tunica magazine. With past art directors of the international culture magazine including Julia, Folch Studio and Studio Lin, Bureau Borsche embraced the challenges it presented: “The thing about having a one off is you don’t have to create a design which has to last for several issue – it gives you more space for experimenting.”

In signature Bureau Borsche style, it’s a punchy hit of black, white and red. “The aesthetics are a mix between classic elements, like the serif font and the grid, and some distorted elements,” explains Mirko. “The calligraphic font is also a mix between classic and 80s tags. The body text sizes vary to the long of the text to create a busy environment and scratches, graphic codes and fades are also part of the design.”

The calligraphic type was designed especially for Tunica and Mirko thinks it’s brave for the mag to use a font “which isn’t easy to read” but instead makes a statement. “Our aim was to create a font for the magazine that works as a corporate identity, helping it stand out on the shelf as well as creating a post out of the cover artwork,” says Mirko.

With the studio in Munich and Tunica based in New York, the time difference was the main difficulty in terms of process and never properly meeting the people you’re working with. “After turning a few design around, trying out different style and looks, we found a good mixture all together, that in the end made all of us happy,” Mirko explains. “The challenge about magazine design is that your design idea must be flexible all the time, because compared to other design disciplines, the content, advertising and text length varies and changes from magazine to magazine, which makes it very hard to plan a certain design, and instead you react and adapt your designs to what your given.”

Mirko adds: “I think it always sounds super to design a new look for a magazine and then when you work on it reality hits you hard and you realise how many beautiful and unique magazines are out there already.” With a choice of four covers to choose from, this is the sixth issue of Tunica and has contributions from Michael Bailey-Gates, Filip Custic, Cordova Canillas and many more.