Gallery: Playboy Trades Nipples for Good Design, and It Works (NSFW)
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*Playboy* just underwent a massive redesign. Its March issue—its table of contents can be seen here—features no nude women, and a slick new graphic treatment.
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For the new design, Mac Lewis, Playboy’s creative diretor, commissioned a new typeface by Okay Type, a foundry in Chicago. It’s at twist on Playboy’s longstanding wordmark.
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Going forward, it's the only typeface the magazine's designers will use. This helps to avoid what Lewis calls “the mish-mash of ten different typefaces, which Playboy was famous for in the past.”
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The old design was cluttered and frenetic. The January/February issue's table of contents, here, demonstrates as much.
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Same goes for this table of contents page from the January/February issue.
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The heavy, expressive font also makes it easier to keep the rest of the layout clean, so the photography can pop, as seen in this front-of-book interview rubric.
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The older version of the front-of-book interview, here.
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The new...
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...and the old.
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The new front-of-book cocktail page...
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...and the old.
