“My baby, Byline!”: Madeline Montoya on creative directing one of the most exciting new publications

Byline is the one of the coolest new magazines on the block. Alongside some great writing, what’s cemented its place onto the shelves of indie publishing hubs is its brilliantly off-kilter design: the freeform wordmark, jaunty angles and animated cover shoots. It has Madeline Montoya to thank for this – the Texas-born, New York-based creative director and designer with a burning passion for all things editorial.

Madeline discovered she had an affinity for print design back in college after she threw herself into the tried-and-tested method of having a pop at any design project that came her way. She paid close attention to what she was best at, and what she most enjoyed (“usually those things go hand in hand”), and found herself drawn to the pacing of print design, which soon snowballed into an obsession with magazines. “There was something appealing to me about people being able to put together all sorts of stories and photography in one place, weaving them together through the publication’s look,” Madeline says.

While Madeline may have found herself pretty solidly immersed in the world of magazines, she’s discovered that the niche actually requires a whole host of skills beyond editorial design. “A huge part is branding. A publication is a brand, from the more straightforward parts like logo, the more complex ideas of what kind of images we produce, or how we write headlines,” says Madeline. “It helps me to think of the publication as a brand, but what we sell is stories and a way of thinking or feeling.” Madeline’s aware, though, that a thorough approach isn’t always possible with smaller, or newer magazines as time and budget doesn’t stretch – and so, for such projects, she aims to be as “holistic as possible, but malleable”.

This attitude has served Madeline well when building the visual world of Byline from scratch. Madeline got the gig after meeting one of her best friends while working at a magazine, who then introduced her to the writer Megan O’Sullivan who, alongside co-founder Gutes Gutterman, needed a designer for their new magazine, Byline. “It literally started off as a DM conversation,” says Madeline. From the offset, after hearing Megan and Gutes’ vision, Madeline knew she wanted to create something fun, with lots of space to grow. This is another of the (many) joys of working in publication design for Madeline – its collaborative nature. She can often find herself in conversation with writers, photographers and more, working together for the best way to tell a story.

To achieve her vision for Byline, Madeline avoided a visual look that was too uniform, instead opting for an eclectic look: “something young and small doesn’t need to have a specific look in every facet,” she says. Typefaces clash, from the free-flowing wordmark to a classic serif typeface, and wiggly, colourful headline fonts; and the landing page has overlapping buttons, images and statements.

For the bulk of the type, Madeline opted for Neue Haas Grotesk, for its “versatility” and a modified version of the “stunning” Times New Roman which she sometimes condenses to give a bit of “kookiness”. The logo however, is Gruppo Due’s G2 Ciao. At first Megan and Gutes wanted something hand drawn for the logo, but upon seeing G2 Ciao, they fell in love. “It feels sort of hand drawn but also more concrete than that,” says Madeline. “It’s such a unique typeface and felt perfect for Byline: playful, but not too silly.” One of the hurdles Madeline came up against with such an eclectic design, was ensuring that the visual look didn’t become too overwhelming. “I started off with something much more expressive in the site design and ended up toning it down,” says Madeline. “This was such an exercise in restraint and holistic branding.”

Alongside the Byline, Madeline is an art director at Bloomberg Businessweek. For the magazine she’s leads the design of its special Heist issue, for which she moved away from the archetypal black-and-white noir aesthetic associated with crime, instead moving toward colour, type and comical 3D scenes of heists in place, design by 3D artists Pedro Veneziano, Joanee Joo, and Max Guther. Whereas for The Longevity Issue, Madeline avoided the “overdone” lab images associated with doctors and scientists, instead going for eerie conceptual still lifes.

It probably comes as no surprise to hear that Madeline has always had big dreams of starting her one magazine, something the Byline project has given her a taste of – “I feel really lucky, and just hope we keep growing,” she says. She’s also keen to try out some teaching at some point, to help others make their way into the editorial world, a world that feels smaller and more at risk of extinction by the day. Finally, the big pipe dream for Madeline is to one day own her small magazine shop, for which she would do all the branding and shoots. “But there’s already so many people already doing an amazing job with that,” she ends. “I’ll stay the consumer for the time being!”