Visual Design

20Twenty

Rick Smee, photographer • Year 2017

The folded 20Twenty newspaper on a white surface: a black and white close-up of a shouting face with a large green 20 across it.

The challenge

A monthly newspaper for a photojournalist's pictures of protest and change.

In 2017, in London, photographer Rick Smee wanted a periodical for his reportage: one issue a month, each one devoted to a moment of unrest, protest or revolution he had photographed.

The idea was simple: print the pictures as a newspaper. Cheap paper, big pages, no gloss — the format that has carried this kind of picture for a century. The first issue, In Defence of Lost Causes, is about Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, its speakers and its long history of free speech.

I designed the identity and the editorial layout in InDesign: a tabloid where the photographs set the rhythm and the text steps back.

Sector
Editorial photography
Duration
2017 (UK)
Team
With Rick Smee, photographer
Tools
InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator
A blurred black and white close-up of a face, printed across a full spread.

My role

  • Concept and format
  • Masthead and identity
  • Editorial layout and typography
The back of the folded newspaper on a white surface: a woman in a headscarf with her hand on her chest.
Black and white close-up of an elderly man with glasses reading from an open book, seen from below.
A speaker in a cap leaning over a small lectern covered in hand-written notes, bare trees behind him.
A preacher in a pinstripe suit holding an open book and raising his hand, with blurred green trees behind him.
Black and white photograph of a man shouting and pointing his finger to the sky, bare tree branches behind him.

The result

A 28-page tabloid where full-bleed portraits face short essays, with the green 20 of the masthead as the only colour.

Black and white, printed on newsprint: the pictures look like the news they document, and the periodical format lets every issue tell one story.