What if an album wasn't just heard — but read, felt, and lived on the page like a magazine cover story?
I reimagined Zara Larsson’s So Good as a magazine system, concert poster and packaging concept.
Make an album feel like an editorial object — heard, but also read and held.
A print-grade identity that gives the music a visual world and reads as a designer's command of editorial craft.
The displayed spread separates reading from image: the artist’s name, introduction and body copy sit on the left, while the portrait occupies the right. A large white “Z” overlays the photograph, giving the image a typographic identity of its own.
Look for the change in scale. The small text columns support sustained reading; the oversized initial and portrait establish the first impression. The muted pink field holds the two halves together.
So Good, released in March 2017, was Zara Larsson's global coming-of-age moment — a record that bridged Scandinavian pop sensibility with mainstream R&B and dance production.
The brief: treat the album as an editorial subject. Design a magazine feature around Larsson's world — her voice, her image, her persona — using real journalistic copy, photography direction, and typographic systems built from scratch. The result spans seven study and output types: roughs, headline studies, body layouts, photo spreads, a double page spread, a concert poster, and a full CD package.
"I don't know who I am, and this is not my sound forever… I'm a human, so hopefully I will always develop."
— Zara Larsson, NME March 2017Every editorial project begins with structure. The roughs phase established the underlying grid — a 12-column system adapted from classic NME layouts — and tested multiple typographic hierarchies before committing to a direction. Two headline approaches were explored in parallel: a condensed blackletter stacked vertically against the hairline letterforms that would become the final system.
The headline system was the most laboured element of the project. Meta OT Condensed Black set at 140pt was tested against Meta OT Hairline at 195pt — two extremes of the same typeface family in deliberate contrast. The final direction paired the condensed weight for "ZARA" against the hairline for "LARSSON", creating a visual push-pull that mirrors Larsson's own tension between pop accessibility and artistic ambition.
Secondary headlines used Avenir Heavy as a subhead system, with pull quotes set in Avenir Medium Oblique — keeping the hierarchy clear across six layout variations.
Three body layout variations were developed, each exploring a different column configuration and reading rhythm. The copy — drawn from a real NME profile of Larsson — was set in Avenir Light 9pt throughout, giving the pages an airy editorial quality that never competes with the headline typography.
The pull quote treatment evolved across iterations: from a simple italic inset to a fully centred typographic interruption that breaks the column grid entirely — the approach that made it into the final spread.
Photography integration was tested across two approaches. The first used a tight portrait strip — three stacked images of Larsson in pink — running vertically alongside the body text, giving the spread a catalogue-like efficiency. The second gave a single full-bleed image the entire left half of the spread, letting Larsson's presence overwhelm the page before the text takes over on the right.
The second approach was selected for its editorial confidence — image first, then explanation.
The poster makes the artist’s name the first typographic signal, stepping the pink lettering across the top of a pale portrait. The date, venue and address are grouped near the bottom, separating recognition from event information.
Look for the shared palette. Pink and the portrait connect this concert concept to the editorial spread, while the larger name and compact event block adapt the hierarchy to a single vertical format. Distance legibility would still need a print test.
The displayed package sheet carries the pink portrait treatment onto a folding insert, with the front cover and an inverted back panel arranged around the fold. The wavy So Good title adds a contrasting graphic texture beside the compact artist name.
Look for the fold relationship. The reversed back panel shows how the composition is planned across a physical format. This is a packaging design layout; the preview does not establish a manufactured or print-tested result.
This project was an exercise in designing a cohesive visual world across multiple formats — from a single body text column to a full physical object. Every decision made in the roughs phase had consequences in the final spread; every typographic choice in the headline system echoed through the poster and CD.
Working with Zara Larsson's material reinforced something central to editorial design: the subject has to live inside the work. The system isn't just a container for the content — it should feel like an expression of the same energy. The overscaled type, the pink saturation, the handwritten-meets-condensed type pairing: all of it needed to feel like it could only belong to this artist, this album, this moment.