CMJ Magazine

A redesign of the College Music Journal

The College Music Journal is a magazine that publishes weekly college radio charts. It is also the print version of a website that logs all this information on a national scale and is responsible for college radio stations promoting, receiving and reporting new music. It’s not as large an organization as Billboard, but the idea is the same. However, CMJ charts rarely ever feature bands you’ll see on the Billboard top 4o, but rather features lesser known, underground, and indie artists that are popular with younger “hip” crowd and haven’t yet reached mainstream radio. This redesign was intended to play off the idea of “underground” and the “not yet mainstream” artists by styling the entire magazine like a zine. 

Zines are generally handmade small magazines that are targeted at a specific subculture and are often grungy and printed with one color if not entirely black and white. To bring together this handmade quality with a professional magazine, all the text has a hand-done quality to it while still having the uniformity of a magazine. The photos in this redesign are all one color to maintain that lo-fi aesthetic, but still provide the visual variety of a full color publication. Since CMJ focuses on music, a CD sampler is included for the reader to familiarize themselves with the bands and songs on the charts at the moment.