Art direction and graphic design, for ‘The Merchant’, a magazine created for established furniture brand Vitra that shows the latest trends in retail design in a relevant way. A project done with Frame Publishers. Vitra looked for new ways to show their retail design. Working at Frame Publishers, we conceived a cosmopolitan magazine concept that opened up their world — an effective and innovative way of communicating a brand. For this first issue, we featured three metropolises: Amsterdam, Tokyo and Melbourne. For every city, we zoomed in on the local stories, capturing the character, energy, shapes, and colors typical of each place. The embossed cover features a painting by Dutch painter Ferdinand Bol from 1650 of merchant Roelof Meulenaer. The silver cover paper suggests the feeling of a coin, referring to trade. The result is a magazine you want to keep that goes beyond the conventional way of advertising, editorializing the story of Vitra’s retail products through an eclectic and inspiring city guide-like magazine.