About this project
During a four year stint with the Life and Style team at Fairfax Media (now Stuff), I worked as an editorial and magazine designer. My main focus was shaping the visual identity of well-known Kiwi lifestyle publications, including Avenues (Christchurch), Admire (Nelson), and Your Weekend, the popular weekly national newspaper insert.
As readership habits shifted, these favorite publications needed a modern facelift to stay fresh and competitive. The challenge was to execute full scale redesigns that elevated the storytelling while building robust, flexible design systems. These systems had to be easy for editorial teams to adapt to different content every week or month without losing layout consistency or readability.
I led the visual revamp and ongoing production from initial concepts right through to print ready files, focusing on:
Masthead & Identity Development: Designing new mastheads and visual identities for Avenues and Your Weekend to give them a fresh, contemporary look on the stands.
Design Systems & Master Templates: Creating flexible master templates for interior pages and feature layouts to make high volume print production smooth and consistent.
Cover Design: Crafting modern, eye catching covers tailored to reflect the unique vibe of each specific issue.
Cross Functional Collaboration: Working closely with editors, journalists, photographers, and management to make sure the design perfectly matched the editorial vision.
The redesigns successfully leveled up the storytelling and visual hierarchy of all three publications, getting great feedback from both internal teams and readers. The experience gave me deep, practical expertise in managing the entire magazine production process from early planning to final print delivery.
