Tricycle magazine 30th Anniversary cover design

Established in 1990 The Tricycle Foundation is a nonprofit educational organisation, dedicated to making Buddhist teachings and practices broadly available. In 1991 they launched Tricycle, the first magazine intended to present Buddhist perspectives to a Western readership. They approached Superfried design agency in Manchester to develop the cover design for their 30th Anniversary issue.

Predictably the cover would need to typographically convey the number 30. Initial thoughts were immediately drawn to the spiritual symbol Om, since this already looked very similar to the required numbers. An alternative design route was a literal representation of the Tricycle as a typographic illustration style, with the wheels representing the numerals. A third creative route was to simply make use of lotus flower petals to render the 3 + 0.

After careful consideration of the typographic designs, the Tricycle design route was selected as the final creative solution and taken forward for further refinement. Great attention to detail was applied with additional styling to emphasise the Buddhist content via the triple Ying + Yang wheel nuts and Dharma wheel style spokes. A palette of gold, white and black had been previously selected, so numerous colour permutations of the design solution were tested. After the illustration style was complete, additional simplified logomark versions were developed to be used at smaller scale for marketing the birthday issue.