OK, so the lowly newsletter is not the most exciting, glamorous piece of collateral – and the title ‘Regulatory Policy Newsletter’ doesn’t evoke cutting edge design – but I secretly rather enjoyed working on the recent re-design of ICMA’s quarterly publication.
The challenges
- Progress an existing design which had become a bit stale, whilst retaining some of the existing ‘feel’
- Make the newsletter easier and faster to create
- Enhance the on-screen readability of the newsletter whilst maintaining a professional look as a printed document
- Give the newsletter a more authoritative look
- Make the content look more engaging
- Incorporate a new document structure
- Sticking to a tight budget
The thought process
Discussing our initial thoughts about the project with ICMA, it became clear that they were thinking along the same lines as us, and our suggestions received a positive response. Our suggestions were:
- Go back to the drawing board and create a new grid for the document, which is structured, but more flexible that the existing 3 column layout
- Stronger use of colour, and the introduction of a grey to the palette
- Slightly larger body copy, and much stronger headings
- A simplified folio (the page number, title etc. that appears at the bottom of the page)
- A little bit more white space (but not too much)
The design
The newsletter is an A4 portrait format, and I created an eight column grid, with a 12.5 point baseline grid.
This is what looks it like:
