The fall\winter edition of UCalgary Alumni magazine. I didn’t get to design the whole mag this time, but I am pleased with the pieces I got to drive, specifically the cover and accompanying editorial feature.

Our cover story was pitched as a campus walkabout/interview with the newly-installed university president. Our goal was to “get behind the office and the title” of our new president and deliver an engaging story that had his personality and tone of voice.

The UC sub-executive decision-makers said “Great idea! Here’s his official executive photo. Have fun!”

Pretty great photo, right?

All kidding aside, this is a nicely posed, but sterile executive headshot. Perfectly acceptable for a company’s bio page. Not for an in-depth personality profile story. I giggled for a few minutes and then called up my editor to discuss tactics. We decided to approach his executive team one more time and explained our intent for the article and drew from these discussions a better sense of who this man is and, more importantly, his passion for the future of UCalgary. Thus, we developed the theme of “Presidential Perspectives”. Ed is an actively engaged presence in any situation he attends (business/government meetings, teaching a class, having a coffee, etc). He is also super-busy. But never too busy to give you his time and attention. To express this personality, the cover design involved a multi-exposed photo from various candid angles, while the main centre image was crafted to feature his approachable nature and keen focus on you, the reader.

Here are some of the poses we took on the day of the shoot.

Immediately after this session, we followed Ed around campus with video and microphones to capture a walking conversation, pausing at a few locations for extra in-situ portraits along the way. These scenes were used within the magazine feature layout and online to augment the story.

I was also the creative designer tasked with designing the announcement email. So, I went a little bit above and beyond and created an animated email header and custom-coded the 2-column responsive layout grid for the email. You can view that email here →

In case you don’t care, here’s what the animated header looks like:

I live to try new things. It all comes down to the attitude of always seeking ways to raise the bar, despite not being asked to. And I really like working with people who value that mindset as much as I do.

All-in-all, this cover and editorial is part of a nice 52-page print piece. Great to hold and flip through.

For the online version, I was once-again paired up with a talented web developer (Thanks Kailey!), and we ported the content to this website within 3 weeks (sitemap, content map and page builds). Same platform as before, so no great shake-up or advancement there. We are trying to get the editorial process more aligned to an “online-first, rich-media” approach, followed by print, but it’s a slow evolution.

View the online magazine here →

So far, the feedback has been quite positive. I even received a letter of commendation from President Ed McCauley for the many contributions I have made to furthering UCalgary’s reputation of excellence and innovation.

Read it here →, if you want to.