Jordan Maier

designer | art director

designer
illustrator
p-bass enthusiast

Felix Culpa magazine

Felix Culpa

art direction | typesetting & layout

In an age where education often rewards specialization, curiosity across disciplines can be hard to sustain. Many lifelong learners crave a way to explore diverse subjects without being confined to a single field.

I wanted to design a publication that would celebrate curiosity itself — a magazine for readers who take learning into their own hands. The goal was to create something that invited exploration, made intellectual discovery approachable, and reflected the self-motivated spirit of the autodidact.

The result was Felix Culpa, a magazine dedicated to the art of self-education. Its design bridges the practical and the philosophical, featuring articles that range from concrete skills to broad liberal-arts ideas — history, science, philosophy, and beyond. The visual identity emphasizes openness and diversity of thought through varied typography, dynamic layout, and a balance of structured and organic forms.

Felix Culpa presents learning as a lifelong, joyful pursuit. It encourages readers to follow their curiosity wherever it leads and to see knowledge as something to be built, not bestowed.

Timeframe:
16 weeks
Tools:
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign
see my process...A magazine spread about seaplane racing

a spread introducing a feature article about Seaplane racing in the Mediteranian

A magazine spread about the forces of flight

a spread with original illustrations

Felix Culpa vol. 1

A magazine spread

a spread with custom typography introducing a series of articles on English grammar

A magazine spread about English grammar
A magazine spread about standard English

spreads showing a layout for a feature article

A magazine spread about fixing a bike tire

a spread for a front of book article

Process

Felix Culpa's tone

Quirky, funny, off-beat, light-hearted. Irreverent and intellegent. A Kurt Vonnegut-style mixture of mid-western sincerity and acerbic humor.

Felix Culpa's readers

an image showing the flatplan for a magazine

a portion of the flatplan for Felix Culpa vol. 1

Typography

The typeface used for all headings (except for feature articles that use custom display fonts) is Quasimoda, a friendly sans-serif with lots of different weights. If you've made it this far into my portfolio, you've probably noticed that I'm a big fan of sans-serifs like these. But to prove that I'm not some kind of fetishist for sans-serifs, the body copy for all of Felix Culpa is the indomitable Caslon, a serif font with a long track record.

Colors

The colors for Felix Culpa tend to be solid primary colors. There's a dark blue that gets used in the masthead and illustrations. I wanted the colors to feel warm and have a kind of a naïve simplicity.

masthead design and sketches for a magazine's branding

Masthead design and sketches for Felix Culpa's branding

the moodboards for Felix Culpa

Special thanks to Jill Vartenigian for her feedback on this project

Colophon

The entirety of this website was set in Outfit. Designed by Rodrigo Fuenzalida for Smartsheet Inc., Outfit is a geometric sans-serif based on the wordmark of its namesake company, outfit.io.