"Your design fits who we are and our magazine gives us a look we love." "We can't wait to do more issues to see more of your work."
S. Lynn, WOMEN Celebrations

WOMEN Celebrations Magazine, Cover and Inside Layout

Design Task From Client

WOMEN Celebrations is an organization that is geared towards promoting women and their talents and helping them reach their goals in life. The organization has offices all across the country and wanted to expand even further. They have a number of outings, awards and organized meetings thru the year. They wanted others to know about their accomplishments and meetings as well. They decided a magazine would be the perfect medium to display this information on a monthly basis along with the next months happenings for those interested. They would supply copy and most of the photos each month and then I would need to layout, in a pleasing "attract more women to the organization" format, an eye catching cover and also the 80 to 100 pages inside.

Design Solution Created

This is a women's magazine and a women's organization and would need to be geared and imaged in that fashion. After much research and some great photography, I put together a cover to represent the magazine. The photography was done on the spot at meetings and get togethers which made it even easier to create a great look. I worked back and forth with the president of the company to come up with a design style that would suit the audience it was geared towards.

Once the design was decided on, it was just a matter of creation of the inside articles and placement of ads and items to showcase the organization. Most ads that are supplied were already created, the others come in with just some copy and photos and I create them to the advertisers specs and place them in the magazine. The articles have photos supplied and then I find other supporting photos when needed. The copy is written for most of the articles and I have a copy writer I use create or "doctor up" others when needed for inserting.

Once the first issue was created, consecutive issues have been much easier. Styles of fonts and photo treatments and sections have all been established in the first issue. Now it is just a matter of almost a "plug and layout" scenario. Of course always keeping the magazine interesting from month to month is important, but also keeping things consistent month to month is a priority as well. This allows the readers to instantly find the section they always like to read or look for easily. The layout of this magazine became "expected" after the first couple issues.

Design Conclusion

The initial issue took about a month to nail down everything and get a process started of what was expected and to instate an approval process. Subsequent issues were taking about 2 weeks to complete from the initial receiving of items to sending the issue to the print via ftp. The client is current using the issues on a monthly basis as well as using the past issues for promotions. Because of the way this way created, it also able to be used online in a pdf format as well as sent via email saving on printing and shipping costs.