Club Magazine Student Squash Club 2017-2018
Three magazines for members of Groningen's student squash club. They include tournament reports, squash related articles, interviews, quotes from members and pictures from events.
As a team of three guys we work on the three 50+ page magazines for this year. Because of the many international members the club has, more than half of the writing is in English.
Roles and Responsibilities
I did the layout and design for this project, as well as writing articles and competition reports;
- style guide proposal
- setting up the styles in InDesign
- all editing in InDesign
- icon design in Illustrator
- interviews with members of both ongoing competitions
- very short interview with the Rookie of the Year
- articles on joining our open hours and safety in squash
- translating some parts of other writings into English
Final Product
Magazine cover featuring the Rookie of the Year, as well as a short overview of what's inside and the reading mode tip.
The typography was aimed at providing an easily readable magazine (enough white space, no weird fonts, consistency in styles) with a bit of fun everywhere (fonts of the quotes, icons, more colorful sections).
Near final versions of the icons used for stories about competitions, interviews, articles about squash and quotes.
Quotes pages have less serious typography for either funny or provoking quotes. Four of these pages with quotes were spread through the magazine to provide a balance between serious articles, interviews, funny quotes and pictures of club events.
First page of the interview with the current board, showing the pictures of all board members, in case someone forgot ;)
Process and Methods
I was approached by one of the board members to join the team, since they had everything covered except for someone doing the layout and design. We have meetings every few weeks regarding the progress and what's yet to do/who's reponsible.
Once the final work on the layout began, I showed page layouts a few times before sharing the pdf with the team for feedback.
Proposal for a style guide, still in portrait mode.
Work in Illustrator (vector art): various icons, some certified seals, and at the bottom right the final logo for the magazine itself.
Early version of the contents page, shared with the team to find out what they thought of it. Some of the titles were changed, some articles were replaced and the whole thing ended up being 55 pages.
Toughest Challenge
It was quite a long time ago that I last worked in InDesign, so setting up the styles involved quite a bit of Googling and trying out.
What I'd do Differently
Mostly small improvements in typography and spacing between objects. The next magazine, to be released in May includes those improvements.
Tools Used
- MS Word: writing
- Illustrator: icon design and certified seals
- Photoshop: custom artwork, rounded cutouts, removing backgrounds
- InDesign: editing, layout