Field Notes
A slow magazine about walking, hedgerows and noticing — designed to be read outdoors, folded into a coat pocket.
The brief
Field Notes is an imagined independent quarterly. Each issue takes one idea — Edges, Water, Weather — and explores it through essays, maps and drawings.
The challenge
Make an editorial format that rewards slow reading without feeling precious, and a cover system that can change completely each season while still being recognisable on a crowded shelf.
Creative approach
- The page is built on a seven-column grid with an oversized outer margin reserved for the reader's own notes. Captions and folios live in that margin too.
- Covers are flat, layered landscapes cut from the issue's palette. The masthead never moves, so the illustration is free to.
- Headlines pair a high-contrast display serif with an italic for asides; body text is a calm sans set slightly loose for outdoor light.
A margin left open on purpose.
Every spread keeps one wide outer margin empty. Captions, folios and footnotes live there, and so can the reader's pencil.
The rhythm alternates between image-led openers and long, quiet runs of text — a magazine that breathes in and out.
Attention is a kind of landscape too.
Figures in the margin.
- Line drawings commissioned in a single weight to match the body text.
- Mono figure numbers link drawings to essays across issues.
Outcome
A 112-page template, four cover studies and a type system that can be produced by a team of two. The margin notes became the magazine's signature.
Something like this, for you?
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