PROJECT: Hotchkiss Magazine
The alumni magazine for The Hotchkiss School, one of the top-5 prep schools in the U.S., needed greater impact than its current black and white publication was delivering. As the school’s primary marketing tool, it was vital for making the school experience come alive for alumni, parents and potential students.
We begin every publication project with the same goal: to make the publication a cohesive part of the brand and to simplify and optimize the reader experience. To do this successfully, we design with both the client and the reader in mind: the entire layout has the look and feel of the brand’s “personality”; cover, departments, features, and specialty pages are designed to present the content in a logical, organized, easy-to-read format, with lively and engaging photography and/or illustration to attract and hold the reader’s attention.
Our re-design began with a cover concept and department layout that would provide a good foundation for the rest of the book design. Since the environment is a big part of the Hotchkiss experience, we created a cover that would showcase the work of award-winning photographers who capture the beauty of the lake, rolling hills, woods, and golf course that surround the campus. We designed a linear “frame” to hold the header and present the cover photo like a work of art.
For the department layout we followed-through with the framing and stacked lines across the top of each page to hold the header title and selected three muted primary colors for the rules that would bring color onto every page. The department template had to be flexible enough to work with big and small photos, long and short stories, and the 3-column format with rag type was the best choice for legibility and variety of layout. Lastly we chose the typefaces, Times New Roman and Franklin Gothic, for their easy-to-read, elegant, and classic look with one serif and one sans-serif to give adaptability to headers, intro paragraphs, call-outs, photo captions, etc.
With a strong framework in place, we began building the specialty sections, such as “Class Notes” with its listings and photos for each class year or “Campus Connection” requiring multiple looks for a broad range of stories, from small info blurbs to in-depth coverage of campus activities, events, and issues. Most of the photos in these sections would be snapshots submitted by readers or staff, often in very low resolution, so we created layouts built around a grid that would give order and space to multiple small photos without making the pages look cluttered. We also created a wide variety of frames and type treatments for headers, callout quotes, Q&As, and intros that would work together cohesively.
Lastly, the feature section was designed to offer the most opportunities for creativity to keep the magazine fresh and unexpected from issue to issue. The typefaces for headers would be unstructured, but the body text and colors would be consistent with the rest of the book. To showcase the work of professional photographers hired to shoot for feature stories, we designed grids to allow for full-page or double-page spread photos, and multiple options for columns of type, call-outs, and sidebars. The palette of 3 primary colors used throughout the book would continue through the feature section, but the options for color usage would be more flexible.
The new quarterly, 72-page magazine is now one of the key publications for marketing Hotchkiss to potential students and is the sole communication tool for engaging parents and alumni in funding school endowment programs. Roberta Jenckes, Director of Communications at Hotchkiss says, “Boost has designed and produced our award-winning alumni magazine for the Hotchkiss School for ten years. They are creative, hold high standards, and meet deadlines. They are the designers any editor or writer would wish to have as a partner.”
AWARDS
• 2 American Advertising Federation ADDY Award
• Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals for design from CASE in educational publishing