Fucking Young! by

Client: Fucking Young!
Year: 2013-2014
Tags: Art Direction and Design, Digital Activation, Strategy and Design Thinking, Fashion, Identity, Magazine, Print design
Awards: Golden Laus
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A brief in men’s fashion and culture

Eduardo García and Adriano Batista had a blog. It was about men’s fashion. They called it Fucking Young!and Eduardo still has problems explaining the name to his mother. From the start, Fucking Young! was a great success and it became a reference for masculine fashion. With its surprisingly huge outreach, the blog always followed the leitmotiv of showing the work of young talented people: Edu and Adriano like to call it an “inspirational platform”, which helps young photographers, emerging stylists, renowned brands as well as new faces promoting their work. The growth of Fucking Young!’s diffusion was impressive and was the result of mainly online presence and social networks. Eduardo and Adriano’s blog achieved millions of pageviews, so it was a natural progression to go bigger and take the next step. After three years, Fucking Young! was ready to have its printed counterpart, so they came to Folch.

FOLCH - Fucking Young!

Bringing Fucking Young! to the real world

The first thing we needed to focus our attention on was the visual identity. Edu and Adriano had a handwritten logo and we all wanted to keep the same look & feel. We called Ivan Castro — graphic designer who specialises in calligraphy, lettering and typography — and asked him if he would draw the new headline based on the original one. Ivan’s proposal had great attitude and personality, it was fresh and carefully designed. The result was outstanding and both us and the editors were really happy with it.

It was then time to give the content a structure. In order to develop a good printed magazine structure out of the multiple stimuli of the original blog, we needed to understand our client: Edu and Adri were doing —and they still do— everything on their own. “Readers trust our taste” they say, and you could bet that they’re right. Given their situation and their background, the main achievement was to build a framework that could be fixed but flexible at the same time which would make the work easier for the two editors as well as fitting different content styles (interviews, editorials, monographies, etc) in without losing its attitude. The printed magazine, released in thematic issues after every fashion season, was then divided into chapters and conceptualised by the baseline “A brief in men’s fashion and culture in X chapters”. This way, we were creating at the same time a structure and an original style, positioning Fucking Young! strongly in the editorial fashion sphere. Each chapter can work independently from another, making in some way FY! “a publication of publications”.

FOLCH - Fucking Young!

Cool, distinguished, appealing

The publications tone and feel is cool, aspirational and modern: a huge celebration of youthness, in all its forms. Bringing these values to the material world, we designed a magazine with a simple yet cool, distinguished and appealing look. The typefaces we selected for the magazine are emblematic in this sense: the beauty and classical balance of the Adobe Garamond, digitally designed by Robert Slimbach, was paired with the geometric yet organic sans-serif typeface, Nobel, designed by a Dutch type designer. The soft-bound publication combines different relevant fashion-oriented content in an average of 220 pages printed on Cyclus recycled paper. The Fucking Young! headline and issue theme on the cover is enhanced by a tinted foil stamp which stands out on the matte covers of each issue.

International photographers, hottest models

Across all four issues, Fucking Young magazine featured international and well-known photographers like Saverio Cardia, Ferrater Studio, Kristiina Wilson, Michiel Meewis Luca Finotti, Alice Rosati,  Alek Pierre, Alice Rosati, Bichon + Bichon, Frederik Heyman, Jerry Buttles, Luca Finotti, Michiel Meewis, Roman Goebel, Wendelien Daan and Wilkosz & Way, among others. During this time frame, recognised and emerging models were portrayed throughout FY! pages, like Bastiaan Van Gaalen, Adrien Sahores, Florian van Bael, Sebastian Sauvé, Zhao Lei, Mikkel Jensen, Miles McMillan, Ton Heukels, Ben Allen, Jester White, Jake Shortall, Paul Boche, Rutger Schoone, Reuben Ramacher, Jester White. There are many more collaborations still to come.

FOLCH - Fucking Young!

From digital to print. And back

After three years online, when FY! went to print it consolidated and expanded its great success. In a short time, Fucking Young! magazine turned into a new must read for men’s fashion fanatics. Since then, twice a year, we take care of designing and art directing the new issue and we are delighted Fucking Young! has had such an excellent reception all around the world. The Magazine is often sold out in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Milan, London, Hong Kong and Taipei. Now it was time to apply everything we had developed for the printed publication and return it to the blog. The website, where everything began, needed to be updated, reorganised and redesigned. We started applying the new visual identity to the website (changing only the original grotesque Nobel with the Avenir designed by Adrian Frutiger) and enhancing it in different ways. A new online store has been developed, where the shopping experience is user-friendly; the layout is clear and elegant and advertising has been perfectly integrated. The website experience is perfectly responsive and the website is accessible on any device, from everywhere.

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Regarding the platforms structure, the content is divided into two main sections: the original content and external sources, that are clearly organised and easy to find. Finally, after the blog branched out into a printed publication and a brand-new website, Fucking Young! now stands as a complete cross-platform project, positioned firmly as a reference in both digital and print environments. The original Edu and Adriano’s blog turned into a fundamental reference in men’s fashion, the website being in the 73,978 position in the global websites ranking (data: Alexa.com), with more than 160k followers on Facebook and 12k on Twitter. FY!’s instagrams photostream has got more than 44k followers and this number is constantly increasing.

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Art Direction and Design, Digital Activation, Strategy and Design Thinking. Fucking Young!. 2013-2014