Psychology Today is a magazine and website that promotes learning and understanding about mental health and related topics. They also have a service to help connect individuals to mental health professionals. In my Publication Design class we were assigned individual articles and had to find a relevant publication and create a three-spread feature story for it with out article.
The article I was assigned was "When Your Child Is a Psychopath" by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. This article was originally published by The Atlantic. It contrasts a story about a family with a daughter diagnosed with psychopathy and research about a new reward-system based method for people with this condition.
This topic fit well within the work of Psychology Today and I researched the grid system I would be applying my design to. However, I wanted to make this design more bold than what Psychology Today normally creates, so I combined their style with the small-scale magazine/zine Anxy. This magazine focuses on mental health topics often ignored by the general media, as well as using very bold and unique design.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/0e153cf0-05ac-481c-bd2c-2bf887335228_rw_3840.png?h=e1ab8ddf620674e8b332b7018bab262a)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/ef5660a1-d419-4390-b731-46fb98b3e9b5_rw_3840.png?h=00e2f0eb67bc338eb02fdb35cfa2f943)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/1a8fa2b5-b979-4d0e-b330-84fccce840d4_rw_3840.png?h=bc09b3c59f8808ccc5664bb802dea329)
The final design of these feature spreads was based on the reward system talked about in the article, and creates an intriguing look to a topic that might otherwise scare a reader. It invites them to learn more about this condition through the article.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/589b9da0-3c5c-4c4a-9668-95e4ab79fe97_rw_3840.png?h=ce8490f6730d39eb794fd78a54b50ace)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/37b67200-34a7-4b82-80d3-a50f6120373e_rw_3840.png?h=50ea3529f928375cfde2eed833e85b16)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/3e7027f8-1d9f-44af-b415-90bbd9c55db9/f7edd70b-0d03-439c-869c-b0d97d44d512_rw_3840.png?h=c2bc5166751199706afd60e10ec7b8b8)
Textures for graphics made by Madisyn Caraway.