Project

Junta

Editorial design

Art direction

Illustration

2026

Client

Junta, a twice-yearly magazine about concrete architecture, published in Porto

The brief

Junta was started in 2023 by an architect and a structural engineer in Porto, and goes twice a year to about 1,100 subscribers in Portugal and Spain. It is paid for by those subscriptions and by four advertisers from the trade: formwork, precast, admixtures and steel. The first two issues were laid out in the printer’s own template, ads and articles alike, and most went into the recycling with the brochures they resembled. Issue 3 had to reach the printer by the end of January 2026.

The idea

Concrete is poured in one go wherever it can be, because a pause leaves a cold joint. We gave each issue the same rule. One line, drawn by hand, enters on the front cover and runs through every spread without lifting, through photographs, text and the four ads, then leaves on the back cover. Laid end to end, the pages make one long section through the issue’s theme, which is a hard thing to throw away.

Covers

One teal and nothing else: the issue number, the theme and the line where it enters. Bookshop copies of Issue 3 are teal; subscribers’ copies are white with the line in teal, so the people who pay first get the rarer cover.

The teal bookshop cover of Junta issue 03 on concrete

The white subscribers’ cover of Junta 03 leaning on a concrete wall

Junta’s teal and white covers side by side on plywood

The line

Drawn across 160 pages with a 0.5 mm technical pen by Paulo Viana, an architect in Porto, then scanned and placed spread by spread. Where it crosses a photograph it turns white; where it meets a column of text, it waits in the margin.

A Junta spread with one hand-drawn line running across a photograph and text

Close-up of Junta’s line leaving a photograph for the margin

Junta spreads fanned so the line continues from page to page

Pages

Grey uncoated paper at 100 gsm, chosen because it takes a pencil note. Text is set in Leitura from DSType, a Porto foundry, at 12 on 17 points, large enough to read on a site table at arm’s length.

An open Junta on a site table with a carpenter’s pencil and a steel ruler

An open Junta standing on a concrete ledge

A white Junta resting on reinforcement mesh

The drawings supplement

Each issue carries a supplement on unbleached kraft: the drawings of one building at 1:50, folded once to A4. It’s the part readers take to site, so it’s printed on a stock that survives a van.

Junta’s kraft drawings supplement unfolded on a site table

The kraft supplement folded to A4 on a concrete block

The kraft supplement tucked into a teal Junta

What changed

Issue 3 came out in March 2026, the first in the new design, and is the first Junta stocked in bookshops in Porto, Ghent and Madrid. The four advertisers now send their pages in a grey template we drew for them, which is why the line can run through the ads without anyone minding.

Credits

Okapi: Tomás Reis (lead designer), Beatriz Correia (editorial design), Ana Pires (paper and print)
Junta: Miguel Barros (editor), Leonor Antas (co-founder and structural engineer)
With: the line drawn by Paulo Viana, Porto; printed in Porto on uncoated stock

Client

Junta, a twice-yearly magazine about concrete architecture, published in Porto