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KU Honors Newsletter

When I began working with the University of Kansas Honors Program, one of the most prestigious honors programs in the country, one concern dwarfed all others: the program needed a distinct and instantly recognizable brand, while remaining visually a part of the University’s brand.

No small challenge.

It was a learning experience for me, to be sure. One of the first projects I redesigned was their quarterly newsletter, arguably their most important piece as hundreds of alumni and donors received it.

I employed KU’s official color palette of rich dark blue, crimson red, and vibrant yellow. The program’s motto “sic itur ad astra,” “thus one journeys to the stars” received a type treatment that became a staple of the design language.

The name of the newsletter, “The HonOread,” is a portmanteau of “honor” and “Oread,” after Mt. Oread upon which the university was built.

This piece remains special to me as it marks a pivotal moment for the program as its new brand took shape.

Gallery

KU Honors Honoread Newsletter Front Cover

The HonOread quarterly newsletter is a primary means of communication between the Honors Program and its community of KU employees, parents, alumni, and donors. In this redesign, I adopted KU's official colors, a gorgeous deep blue and contrasting red, and a new type treatment to emphasize the play on words between "Honor" and "Oread," the hill upon which the university is built that is one of the highest elevations in the state. These details elevated the look and feel of the newsletter significantly. Feedback from the community was overwhelmingly positive.

KU Honors HonOread Newsletter Inside Spread 1

The redesign continues inside with brand-new headings, inside a treatment of the masthead from the cover, in the same rich color palette and a background of the more famous buildings on campus. The heading backgrounds end in three bars of increasing transparency as they move toward the center fold. I increased white space considerably and employed photographs to add dynamism.

KU Honors HonOread Newsletter Center Spread

The center spread of any newsletter, magazine, booklet, or brochure is a special opportunity for designers because images and text can spread across the center fold without worry of misalignment. Here, the focus is on the rich history of the program, the present, and the past juxtaposed for contrast.

KU Honors HonOread Newsletter Inside Spread 3

This spread is a study in how communicative layout should be. A text-heavy page is counterbalanced with a page dominated by a large, dynamic photograph. Recurring elements make it all of a piece while creating distinct visual boundaries between stories.

KU Honors HonOread Newsletter Back Cover

As the newsletter is distributed via mail, the back cover provides ample space for addresses and postmarks, the white field growing more transparent as it approaches the left edge. This allows for the background image to bleed through and unify the visual elements of the back cover. The newsletter is folded in half for mailing, roughly where the red line in the center is. The bottom half has the program's motto and logo. In this instance, the back cover is much more striking than the front cover, but because of the way it is distributed, the back will be seen before the front. This is the reader's first impression of the piece. You have to make it count.

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