The idea behind Two Halves
Two Halves is a magazine that is about all things women’s football. We aren’t your normal football magazine that focusses on matches and who has scored the most goals this season. We look deeply into the game that is women’s football. The reason we say it’s a different game is because a lot of the time, it is treated like one. We are working together to ensure the stigma is broken and people learn to love women’s football as much as men’s.
The magazine is an opportunity for readers to learn about specifically women’s football in a way that highlights both problems, and ways that the industry is becoming more inclusive to women. It creates a sense of belonging and allows women to open up about experiences in a safe place where they will be respected by all.
The magazine comprises of two halves, the home side and away side, which can be read from opposite sides of the magazine. This adds a quality to the magazine that is unique so will stand out to consumers. The home side includes articles focussing on football players themselves, and the away side is full of articles revolving around the people who support those players, for example referees, coaches, fans and those that work for football clubs.
Our audience
The magazine is made for those who are involved in football in any way (play, work in the industry, support a team, like to watch). But not only this, it is for anyone who wants to get behind the movement of reducing the stigma in women’s football and women’s sports in general. The people behind Two Halves work to put on events for our audience so they can form a community.
Example of spread inside physical crafted mock-up
Two Halves cover series
Our online presence
I was tasked with creating an online presence for the magazine. I created a website, Instagram, and campaign plan for Instagram, all in which act as a hub for all our readers to further engage with Two Halves. Whether this be through buying magazine merchandise, joining online forums, or listening to the podcast, people can become part of the wider community of Two Halves.
The website hosts the majority of our content, including the podcast, preview articles of upcoming issues, online forum, and the shop for magazines and merchandise. This allows it to become a space that supporters of the magazine can come to immerse themselves in the sport.
As Instagram is a more accessible and personal form of social presence for many people, we post highlights from the magazine, allowing readers to see sneak peaks of some of the topics in each issue. This often sparks interesting conversations between readers which brings on that sense of community. It is kept on the image-heavy side as this is what this social media platform revolves around. However, there are some pictures of the magazine so people know what they can expect.
The design process
Throughout the process of designing this magazine, I came across challenges with finding the perfect balance between text and imagery that would tell the story I intended to. The bold typography seen in pull quotes reflects the fact that awareness needs to be spread about the topic of women's football. This was then paired with a rounded body typeface for contrast. In the end, I kept text and image as completely separate elements, not reflecting the front and back covers, to ensure starkness and give them their own time to speak to the readers in different ways.
This project not only emphasised the importance of typographic detailing, but has taught me that this can be used as a tool for portraying certain emotions and storylines. The challenge of reflecting the design of the magazine onto forms of online presence has brought me valuable branding skills too.
See below for the inside pages of Issue 1.