The Daily Press
Magazine rebrand tripled newsstand sell-through in one issue.
Great writing, cover that nobody picked up.
The Daily Press has been making one of Australia's best indie monthlies for a decade. The writing is sharp, the photography is original, the subscribers love it — but newsstand sell-through had quietly dropped 40% over three years.
The owner, Tom, suspected the cover design was the problem. He was right. The covers had drifted into a generic "lifestyle indie" template that blended into every other magazine on the shelf.
We rebuilt the masthead from scratch — bold editorial sans, custom letterforms on the wordmark, and a colour palette that uses one strong accent per issue instead of trying to be all things to all readers.
The cover template now uses a single oversized image with the headline floated over it in a way that recognises the rules of newsstand competition: the eye scans the top-left corner first; the headline goes there.
Internal layout got the same treatment — generous white space, italic serif pullquotes, clear hierarchy. We also handed over a 40-page brand guidelines doc so the in-house designer can ship issues without us being on every call.
A brand system that looks like nothing else on the shelf.
What the rebrand moved.
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3×
Newsstand sell-through
First issue under the new brand vs prior 12-issue average.
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+68%
Subscription conv.
Online checkout completion after homepage refresh.
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+24%
Ad-page revenue
Advertisers willing to pay more for premium pages.
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100%
Reader survey approval
Of 412 readers polled, none preferred the old cover style.
We can edit everything ourselves now without fear of breaking it. The handover was genuinely useful, not a five-minute call.