Erasmus Magazine has a new house style and a new website and the editorial team are really proud of them. On the site you can find all the latest news, background stories and opinion; everything that may be of interest to you as a student or an employee.
During the summer, people have been working hard on the new website and house style for the Erasmus Magazine (EM), together with designers from the Rotterdam company, Unit20, and the website builders from Bolster. The result is a state-of-the-art, entirely bilingual website. On 17 September the magazine will appear in a totally new style and the English language magazine will follow a week later.
Help us improve the site even more! Send us your feedback, so we can iron out the last issues.
Slow journalism
“We are very proud of the appearance of the new EM”, says Wieneke Gunneweg, editor-in-chief of EM. “In addition we have opted for what we call slow journalism: not necessarily wanting to be the first in everything, but certainly the best. EM would like to be an indispensable medium for both students and staff at the EUR.”
Debate and discussion
“It is also exciting for us, because we are going to look for new ways in which to reach people, engage in dialogue with the readers and provide them with stories that will be useful to them,” continues Gunneweg. “But it certainly won’t be a question of ‘you demand, we deliver’. Subjects – both online and offline – will be explored in depth and will have a longer ‘life cycle’ because we will enter into the debate and continue to elaborate on the stories, meaning that they will last longer than one magazine edition.”
Platform
Jaap Stronks, founding father and head of the Bolster bureau, greatly enjoyed working on the site and not just because EM is located in Rotterdam. “To hold people’s interest online you need a good user experience. A platform that helps you to absorb the news easily, to share it and send it on.”
Bolster developed the multi-faceted toolkit needed for this. Stronks: “There are, in fact, many different ways in which you can tell a story – photo galleries, news flashes, short films, longreads, to name but a few; all that is now possible. And, in future for example, podcasts and a discussion forum too.
Robust logo
The designers from Unit20 created the new house style, concentrating on the typography, logo and colour schemes. “The new logo combines the robustness of Rotterdam – steel and concrete – and, with the addition of the hyperlink-like line under the M of EM, alludes to the fact that EM is going to present its stories more and more online. The colour palette reflects the slow journalism approach, with subdued colours,” said Yoe San Liem from Unit20.
Monthly magazine
With the launch of the new website, the number of paper editions of EM will decrease; with effect from this study year EM will still appear every month – the English edition every two months. “From next year, the paper magazine will still appear four times a year as a present to the reader”, said Gunneweg.
