Magazine Design Concept
Memento 2009
A Girlhood Archival
Memento 2009 is a magazine that captures the feeling of what life was like in the early 2000s by serving as an archive of girlhood culture. So strap in and have some fun! And remember… You don’t have to be a girl to miss girlhood.
Overview
Memento 2009 is a concept created as a love letter for those who lived in the 2000s with a passion for glitter and funky fashion. This issue displayed is focused on Barbie-centric topics that adhered to the Y2K culture that circulated in the early 2000s.
My Role
Magazine designer and curator
Deliverables
Full magazine issue
The Challenge
Documented history exists everywhere, but in today’s fast-paced digital culture, many important elements of the early 2000s that made the lives of young girls and boys colorful are slowly fading away as society advances. Many professional design narratives prioritize minimalism as the forefront of storytelling instead of embracing the maximalist, hyperactive culture from Barbie movies to glitter gel pens that still exists today.
The Solution
I challenged myself to design a magazine that explores girlhood culture from the early 2000s, with an emphasis on balancing nostalgic collage aesthetics with a structured editorial design language. Memento 2009 is designed to bridge playful, energetic visual storytelling with intentional grid-based layouts. The magazine is intended to celebrate and remember the rich culture of the early 2000s under the lens of those who lived through the girlhood era. For this project, I stepped outside of my comfort zone to explore different design approaches outside of the norm to create something that a reader can reminisce about or learn about something new outside of their experiences. This project helped sharpen my technical skills while having the freedom to express creativity in new ways.
Concept
Memento 2009’s concept is heavily inspired by early 2000s maximalist style combined with editorial collage to keep the visuals of the magazine playful while being sleek. For this issue, Memento 2009 mainly focuses on how Mattel’s Barbie influenced the early 2000s Y2K culture through their dolls, with a little dash of glitter and tiaras to hit the sweet spot.
Development Process
Memento 2009 was originally developed as a magazine with completely different topics, as I experimented with three distinct visual iterations before finding an aesthetic and design language that fit the themes of the magazine and its topics while balancing elements to establish cohesion throughout the spreads.
I referenced early 2000s scrapbooking techniques and Y2K web graphics and textures throughout the magazine. Having additional elements like layering, silhouetting images, adding stickers, and first-person diary captions for each topic was used to reflect the magical imagination we all had in early girlhood.
