ELEPHANT MAGAZINE: New Identity

Created with London-based studio Kellenberger-White, Elephant magazine’s new design marks the next chapter for the global quarterly art and culture magazine, with a change to the logo, page design and paper stock. The logo was the starting point for the new art directors, who took a decidedly literal reading of the magazine’s title and visited the elephant enclosure at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire for inspiration.

“We watched how they move, how they behave together, how they use the trunk as a tool,” the designers say. “Naughty Elephants Squirt Water—not only a mnemonic (NESW), perhaps. We took this as a suggestion for our approach to designing Elephant’s new graphic identity. Later that day, on a building site near our studio in East London, we tried to create letterforms by squirting water on the ground. After a few days of experimenting and elephant-infused acting, we’d found our direction.”

Issue 32, which launches on 6th October, the first to be art directed by Kellenberger-White, takes perfection as its research subject, speaking with artists such as Kate Cooper, Jo Longhurst and Eva O’Leary—whose Redhead (Amie) was selected for the cover—about the hooks and pitfalls of perfection. For Perfect Me, Perfect You the magazine asks: “Is perfection troubling us now more than ever?”
 
“Artists are well placed to explore this ideal,” it continues, “offering us glossy images of the perfection we crave and revealing the trick for what it is. In these images, we see acts of violence, oppression and pure emptiness. We see the human falling short again and again. But we also see moments of hope. If we aren’t chasing perfect, what possibilities are we free to chase?”

Frieze Week Events

On Sunday 1 October, Elephant launches elephant.art, a global new website that will feature many regular features—including 5 Questions, Studio Visits and Sunday Read—alongside video interviews, digital image galleries and new series that explore artist process and art scenes in different cities around the world.
 
Elephant celebrates the launch of one of the first Elephant books, Nicola Hicks’s Keep Dark on Monday 2 October at Flowers Gallery in London. The book launch coincides with the artist’s solo exhibition at the gallery, which brings together her commanding large-scale sculptures, drawings and smaller models. The artist will be present.
 
On Thursday 5 October, Kellenberger-White will be speaking at magCulture in Clerkenwell about the new design of the magazine.
 
After previewing the magazine in Chicago and Berlin in September, Elephant will officially launch the issue on Friday 6 October at Parasol unit in North London. In the morning, the gallery will host an Instameet, offering the chance to view the current exhibition in an intimate group, hear more about the show from the gallery and speak with some of the Elephant team about the new design (there will be elephant-themed baked goods). From 6:30 - 9pm, Elephant will hold their annual Frieze week party at the gallery. The event will coincide with Parasol unit’s exhibition of American artist Martin Puryear, his first solo exhibition in the city that will span forty years of his career.

Elephant Magazine