Making a digital magazine: here’s our Take
One day in early 2026, LOOP Tackle came to Story asking for help with the launch of their new, interactive digital magazine dedicated to all things fly-fishing – called The Take.
Here, Story’s Senior Designer Colin McArthur and Senior Digital Account Manager Simone Campbell share what they learnt from their latest foray into the world of digital publishing.
Q. What was the aspiration for The Take digital magazine?
SC: Loop wanted their digital magazine to be a must-read for anyone with a passion for fly-fishing. They’ve committed to publishing pages and pages of really high quality content every month, so our first goal was to create a suite of design templates that would make those fast monthly turnarounds as seamless as possible.
CM: The Take collates lots of articles from different contributors. Some of them are image-led travel pieces by brand ambassadors, some of them are deep dives into different hook types and some of them are beautifully written pieces by best-selling authors. So the whole look of the magazine needed to feel like a beautiful celebration of wild adventures in wild places. Highly visual, intuitive navigation and a pleasure to spend time reading at your leisure.
Q. Why did you choose Foleon?
SC: We were asked to compare a number of digital publishing platforms for suitability.
The brief was for something that felt like a high-end editorial experience with rich photography, long-form writing, video, product storytelling, optimised mobile usability, no ads, and something that could grow into a monthly publishing model.
We spent a good bit of time researching a mix of platforms, from more traditional PDF-to-web flipbook tools through to more flexible digital publishing platforms. The flipbook options were useful as a reference point, but they didn’t feel right for The Take because the reading experience can be quite static, especially on mobile.
Foleon won out because it felt the closest to what Loop were trying to create: a magazine that behaves more like a website.
Q. What do you like about the platform from a design POV?
CM: Foleon lets you build a ‘brand kit’ with all of the elements and styles you’d expect: colour palette, fonts, graphic elements and the components that would be used to create the articles going forward.
One aspect that appealed to us was the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor where you can customise the design components as you go. That was really helpful when we were developing templates, as timelines were tight and we needed stakeholder approval on assets as we were developing them.
Q. What were the biggest design challenges?
CM: Each edition of The Take has a lot of content, so it’s important that the layouts don’t get stale for the reader. That meant designing different versions of components that have some visual variation but still feel as though they belong to the same stable.
With an eye on future editions, we also needed a design that would give us consistency, but allow us to keep things fresh from issue to issue.
With Foleon, the pages can scroll naturally, the layouts are responsive, and there’s enough flexibility for image-led features, long articles, video, product moments and interactive elements to sit together without everything feeling like the same template over and over again.
Q. What design principles did you have to factor in?
CM: As a digital designer, I have the privilege of working on a huge screen, seeing images at high resolution and videos streaming perfectly. But it’s really important to consider how the layouts and transitions will look across all devices.
So for example, we introduced a simple looping video background for the front page which plays on large screens. But Foleon has a feature that automatically switches to static imagery on smaller phone screens, where video would struggle to stream and complicate the visual experience. This way, readers get the best possible first impression of the magazine, whatever they’re viewing it on.
Legibility is also really important – which means picking your typography carefully. For the most part we’ve used Merriweather, a highly legible, serif font designed to be easy to read on screens. It balances traditional, Old Style influences with modern, clean and efficient design principles. For the typography geeks, it features large x-height, slightly condensed letterforms, sturdy serifs and mild diagonal stress, making it excellent for long-form content, articles, and websites.
Q. What is your favourite thing about the magazine?
CM: We’re onto Issue 5 now, and it’s been great working and refining each edition with the editor Andrew Flintoff. He has a genuine and infectious passion for fly-fishing that really comes through in the content and in the way we work together. It’s been an extra bonus for me seeing positive feedback from users who are enjoying it.
SC: My favourite thing about The Take is probably seeing it all come together each month. With the templates Col creates and the content we receive, it’s really satisfying going through the final version, seeing all the beautiful photography and nature-focused content.
From a build side, Foleon makes it easy enough for me to jump in and handle small text tweaks or updates without having to bother Col. I think I still manage to drive him slightly mad on a monthly basis, but I hope he agrees that we make a good team!
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