Atlantic

Logo and Custom Typeface
Direction by Peter Mendelsund and Oliver Munday
Images courtesy of The Atlantic

The Atlantic, one of America’s oldest and most influential magazines, was founded in Boston in 1857. As part of a major redesign, MCKL was commissioned to create a new logo and custom display typeface that would honor the publication’s legacy while modernizing its visual identity.

The custom typeface draws inspiration from the nameplate of The Atlantic’s earliest issues. Through extensive research, we traced the magazine’s original typography back to the Boston Type Foundry and its distinctly American interpretation of Scotch Modern fonts. By blending these historical influences with contemporary refinements, we developed a typeface that feels both timeless and uniquely suited to the magazine.

For the logo, we looked to classic American versions of Garamond, particularly those published by ATF and Ludlow, to craft a refined yet authoritative wordmark. The final design features a distinctive “A” and a reference to the magazine’s founding year, reinforcing its storied heritage.

A few years after the redesign, MCKL was asked to expand the typeface, adding new weights, widths, and italics to create a more versatile typographic system that could adapt to The Atlantic’s evolving design needs.

A large, red, three-dimensional letter 'A' sculpture stands prominently on a platform labeled 'The Atlantic' in elegant serif lettering. The installation is part of an outdoor event setup, identified as The Atlantic Festival, held on a wooden deck at sunset. The scene includes branded exhibits, such as a black Pfizer booth on the left and an 'American Metamorphosis' display on the right. Overhead string lights and flags flutter in the breeze, with a partly cloudy sky and warm twilight tones in the background.

A grid of ten colorful book-style covers in the Atlantic Edition series, each featuring an essay title and author in tall, black serif typography. The covers display bold, solid background colors including magenta, red, gray, blue, orange-red, teal, mustard yellow, orange, sage green, and taupe.