STANDARD
Art direction. Graphic design.
Quarterly publication, Standard, for the Alexandria, VA-based National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE).
The redesign.
My freelance relationship with NASBE began in 2003 with work on their annual reports and the Standard. The issues were initially a flat 2/color design. A few years later, we moved to 4/color, and then in 2015 it was time for a major overhaul and I began work on a polished and contemporary look and feel for the publication.
I started with an updated color selection of more modern hues of NASBE's existing dark corporate palette.
Negative becomes positive.
To improve readability, I opted for a narrow and contemporary font family for the long article titles and nixed the 3-column format for a tighter 2-column design. This created more negative space in the outside margins, allowing the same amount of content and data of this graph- and chart-heavy business journal to feel lighter and not so overwhelming.
The simplicity of the new layout was not only well-received by the client and subscribers, but lends itself to a more efficient and uncluttered workflow during the design process.
