RaceWknd, issue no. 1

RaceWknd is a new magazine for Formula 1 fans, created during lockdown and crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign. The magazine was founded by publisher Magnus Greaves and creative director Tom Brown, and realized together with editor Emily Chavous, Formula 1 correspondent Paul Weaver, and photographers Darren Heath and Fredrik Brodén.

The Premiere Issue of RaceWknd pulls together the global F1 fan community to celebrate the iconic circuits, cities, and culture of Formula 1. It features an insider guide to all 22 Grand Prix locations originally selected for the 2020 season along with epic first-person stories from notable names in motorsport and dynamic never-before-seen photography from legendary F1 photographer Darren Heath.

The typography doesn’t take a back seat. Tom Brown dusted off Compacta and demonstrates that Letraset’s display sans from 1963 still is a banger. Compacta is used in big and bigger sizes, with some glyphs scaled to fill an entire page, or even two. The chosen version is one of the digitizations of Compacta Bold with pronounced ink traps, probably ITC’s or Monotype’s. Originally introduced to keep spots clear and uncluttered where diagonals meet, these notches take on a new role in sizes this large. Now they help to establish a techy and trendy feeling. The occasional italicized letters within words add to the contemporary look, and perhaps symbolize racers revving it up, accelerating to pass (or crash into?) their neighboring glyphs.

Compacta is paired with Söhne Mono for text and Eurostile Extended for headings. See more images on the websites of RaceWknd and TMBRWN as well as their Instagram accounts, @theracewknd and @graphicdesignmachine.