Regular readers will know how much we enjoy The Fence for its journalism, humour and general tone of voice. Somehow the page design always gets overlooked; art director Mathias Clottu helps right the situation.

At first glance it’s a simple formula: a two/three column grid, two colours, a single, serif text font and a condensed, bold, headline font. Simple and classic—what is there to say about the design? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Simplicity takes work!

Mathias spends two weeks on each issue, working remotely from his eponymous design studio in North London. I asked him to talk us through the issue in five spreads.

We started, naturally enough, with the front cover (top). The familiar Fence two-colour palette is usually set out here: the red and black that every issue adheres to. But not this time—the cover here is black and white, ‘I guess the colour is coming more from the energy than from the actual colour,’ explains Mathias. The absence of colour is highlighted by the red staples (above) which make it clear that the monochrome look is deliberate rather than an oversight, and are also a nice reflection of the magazine’s written wit. ‘We wanted this issue to be special, without being ostentatious. It's a celebration of our lo-fi identity,’ Mathias adds.

‘We redraw the logo every issue, working with typographer Adrien Vasquez or the illustrator. This time we asked cover illustrator Martin Groch to intervene with ink stains.’ Although different every issue, the logos are all based on the same lettering, designed by Vasquez. Groch also designed the gritty cover image, announcing ‘The Print Special,’ showing the magazine coming off press at the printers, with the further visual pun of a fence on every cover. 

The first spread of the issue (above) demonstrates an important new direction for the magazine: the introduction of advertising. The subscription ad on the right is a demo. ‘We’re looking back at how magazines used to offer ad design as a service, creating ads that fit The Fence’s DNA,’ says Mathias, ‘with brands partnering with the editorial team.’ 

The headline here is an example of how The Fence’s block font adapts to a theme; the letters are dripping ink (more of which later).

The following spread is a regular one, highlighting contributors (left) and sharing the contents (right). Only this time the left page has all the text printed upside down, reflecting bad experiences with cheap printers when the maagzine first launched, ‘We had some issues where some pages were printed upside down or collated upside down,’ Mathias says. Illustrations of printing presses hissing and sparying paper sit the right way up. 

Mathias describes the contents page on the right as ‘Constant and very classical in form—it needs to be super legible—but the content isn’t. To the right is the content: regular typeface for the the title, italic for the author. And on the left are jokes and comments, marginalia.’

Back to the bold headline font, ‘We now have 15 different headline typefaces,’ says Mathias, ‘each started as a new set of characters for the masthead.’ They all feature regularly now, filled out into complete sets of capitals. This one (above) started life on the cover of issue 14, based on a pub font. These sets of typefaces based on the same initial font are a subtle way to add personality without switching style completely.

For the new issue’s lead feature about the state of print magazines (above), the original starting font is used for the headline and all 12 pages are flooded with red. There’s always been an ambiguity: is the colour red or orange? ‘Some days it’s orange, some days red,’ says Mathias, ‘and depending who’s printing it, there is always a little bit of variation.’ As we talk, he settles on the more precise ‘typographic red.’

Using two such bold colours allows key stories to be highlighted like this. And there’s some fun on this spread too: the red drips at the bottom are part of the headline font used on the opening spread, above. A sentence is printed in red against the red background, the drips attached to the letters being the only legible element of the sentence. ‘Is it blood? Is it ink? Is it death or is it celebration? I think it's celebration,’ says Mathias, ‘The Fence are really die-hard printed magazine people. You know, they love Private Eye, they love Spy magazine.’

‘The Fence is essentially a magazine that should be read and not just looked at. It’s a balance. I want the text to be read, but I want also to have those moments of fun.’

This spread falls in the middle of Naomi Wood’s story, ‘Cannonball.’ The artist here is Martin Groch again, and is planned to reflect the cannonball of the title. ‘We’ve worked on a system from day one that was almost part of designing the identity. It's something that no one sees, but it’s a timing plan with Charlie (the editor) and getting all the content ready in one hit. We flow the text in quickly and design exactly where the illustration will go. And then the illustrators fill in. So on this page the circle was designed before we had the artwork.’

‘We have a pool of around 10 illustrators and I try and have one illustrator for each of the four sections in the magazine. This issue the four are Martin Groch, John Broadley, Paul Cox and Natalya Lobanova.’

I promised you five spreads, we’ve given you six already. But I can’t end without noting the back page, always a vehicle for a slogan of some sort. What better for ‘The Print Issue’ than to shout out the magazine’s URL?

And finally a sign off from Mathias: ‘There is a simplicity about it, and often simplicity takes a lot of work. It’s actually a compliment when something looks effortless or simple or on and on, as you say, but actually there’s a lot of work, it’s very much conscious and very much intended.’

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