When I was hired at Jesuit Dallas to serve as the Digital Communications Specialist, the primary focus of my role was the school's web site and social media. However, because of my background in graphic design, I own began to take on other responsibilities as well – first, leading the creation of various print & collateral needs for the school (posters, brochures, mailers, etc.), and eventually taking over the design of the school's alumni magazine which had, until that point, been entirely outsourced for decades.
During my tenure as the graphic designer for the school, I took the Jesuit Today magazine from an inconsistent & bare-boned 24-page magazine to a hefty 60-page publication that was much more aligned with the visual brand of the school (including a new "logo" for the magazine). I'm proud to say that, while it's been nearly a decade since my last issue designing the publication, the majority of the templates and style decisions I made in my three years working on it are still being used by the staff designer today.
In the summer of 2013, the school became interested in releasing a special publication highlighting the various donations that the school had received in the past fiscal year, so I spearheaded the effort to create the school's first comprehensive annual Impact Report – essentially a third issue of the magazine – full of lists, charts, and other infographics. Like the Jesuit Today, the overall design of the annual Impact Report that I developed in 2013 is still being used by the school today.
Below, you can see some of the highlights from the six issues (and the first impact report) I created before shifting to my new role in August 2014.
Winter 2012
The first step toward designing for the magazine was just a cover – the school's Director of Communications wanted to reimagine the look of the cover for the first time since the school's major rebrand a few years prior. In addition to attempting make the "logo" more consistent (it's positioning and appearance haha previously changed from issue to issue), she also wanted to create a "special edition poster" with an image of the senior class that wrapped around to the back. As you'll see, my first couple of issues weren't a major departure from the magazine as it had existed before (other than a playful choice to intentionally bleed the "Y" off the edge of the page), but the introduction of a consistent blue bar across the top helped to visually connect the new Jesuit logo with the "Today" on the magazine's title.
Summer 2012
My first full issue of the magazine maintained a lot of the existing organization & appearance of the publication while still allowing for me to inject my own small improvements to the design. For one thing, it was the first issue to increase the number of pages from 24 (this time to 36 pages), allowing for content to breathe a bit more and making room for more photos. The front cover maintained consistency with the previous issue, utilizing the new blue bar in order to visually connect the school's logo with the magazine title (although this time, the word "Today" did not bleed off of the page). One of the primary areas of change was the inclusion of a singular defined cover story. Another was a shift to the visual appearance of the "Class Notes" section in the back (including the way in which wedding and new children announcements were presented).
Winter 2013
In January 2013, we created an issue of Today dedicated to covering the school's 70th anniversary. My favorite part of the magazine was the concept I developed for the cover (based on a popular trend I'd seen online at the time): finding an archival photo that had been taken on campus, and then taking a photo of the photo in the same spot it had been shot 40 years earlier. Through a LOT of trial and error, we finally got a useable shot using a photo of a group of freshmen in the early 1970s sitting in front of some lockers in the main hallway of the building. Elsewhere throughout the issue, we used additional archival photos to highlight longstanding traditions of the school. Another highlight of the issue was the development of a new template for the "In Memoriam" section at the back of the magazine, the appearance & layout of which are still in use by the school today.
Summer 2013
By the time I worked on the summer 2013 issue of the magazine, I finally felt ready to completely overhaul the design of the magazine, particularly the cover. In an effort to give the magazine its own sense of brand, I manipulated the text of "Today" (removing the crossbar of the A) and eliminated the school's logo from the front cover, a decision based in the fact that the magazine had long gone from being referred to as "Jesuit Today" to simply "Today". The new "logo" that I created was one of my proudest contributions, and like many of the other changes that I introduced to the magazine, it is still utilized to this day. I also created a column of text along the spine on the left side of the cover, teasing the contents that would be found inside, something that remained a visual constant for several issues to come.
This issue of the magazine primarily covered the completion of the major capital campaign that had just concluded at the school, and it was the coverage of that campaign that led to the decision to create a separate annual publication: the Impact Report (see below).
2012-2013 Impact Report
As mentioned above, after covering the conclusion of the school's most recent major capital campaign, the decision was made to create a comprehensive annual report to highlight not only the donors and impact of the campaign, but to include all annual givers and major highlights of the most recent fiscal year as well. It was important to maintain consistency with the school's brand while also visually setting the publication apart from the Jesuit Today magazine. It was also important, because this would be the first widely-distributed publication providing this level of detail, to clarify the differences between annual and non-annual giving (which I did using colored bars across the tops & bottoms of every page) as well as the differences between each of the individual drives and other annual giving opportunities. I also set a personal goal of trying to make the publication as engaging and interesting as possible despite the fact that it was mostly just 52 pages of lists, so I had a lot of fun creating charts & infographics to spread throughout.
While I only ended up creating one impact report before my move into a teaching role at the school, the school does still publish one every year – making use of several of the visual components (including the color-coding) to this day.
Winter 2014
The winter 2014 issue (released in January) helped to cement the visual changes that had been instituted in the previous issue of the publication. The new logo and teaser column on the front remained consistent (as they would continue to be), and the now well-established sections in the magazine (News+Notes, Lead Stories, and Class Notes) had their own distinct visual styles. This issue was also the first to feature more than one lead story (one story explored the history of the Jesuit Women's Auxiliary while the other covered the career paths of four debate team alumni), so it was fun to find a way to visually distinguish each cover story while not straying too far from the overall visual identity of the magazine.
Summer 2014
My final issue of the magazine was also my biggest – 60 pages long! It also has one of my favorite covers: to highlight the cover story honoring the school's veteran alumni and faculty, I developed a concept to capture a shot containing a military dogtag along with the unique "junior cross" necklace (an item received by every student toward the end of their junior year as a symbol of their leadership to the school, and for many Jesuit alumni, something still worn for years or decades after graduating). This issue also introduced a couple of new features: a "Jesuit Profiles" page in which three faculty respond to light trivia questions about themselves, and a "Reflection" editorial on the last page, providing a spiritual reflection from the school's resident priest and rector.
