Forth Magazine
Overview
Forth Magazine is a literary magazine website concept designed to feel like a respected print publication translated into a digital reading experience. The project combines editorial stories, essays, interviews, reviews, reading guides, and curated book recommendations within a single visual system. A key part of the concept was integrating affiliate-driven book recommendations without allowing the commercial layer to overpower the publication itself. The result is a calm, typography-led interface where hierarchy, spacing, composition, and reading flow take priority.
The Problem
Forth Magazine needed to balance a serious editorial reading experience with an underlying affiliate-driven business model. The challenge was to introduce book recommendations and commercially relevant content without making the website feel like an ecommerce store, product catalogue, or conventional content blog. The design also needed to support different editorial formats while maintaining a consistent identity across desktop and mobile.
The Solution
I designed Forth Magazine as a complete editorial interface system in Figma, covering the homepage, article experiences, reading guides, category-style layouts, interviews, editorial content lists, and responsive mobile views. The homepage establishes the publication through a dominant editorial story, an Editor's Choice book column, secondary articles, and a restrained newsletter section. Long-form reading pages use a narrow content column, generous spacing, strong typographic hierarchy, and subtle dividers to create a focused reading experience. Affiliate-focused reading guides use large book-cover treatments, editorial commentary, recommendation blocks, and understated outbound links rather than ecommerce-style product cards. I also created responsive mobile layouts that preserve the editorial hierarchy and reading experience on smaller screens.