CIO Connect magazine cover design

Here’s a quick look at the Winter issue of  CIO Connect. It’s a quarterly magazine for Chief Information Officers (top IT bods to you and me).

Normally the cover feature photos are taken by the talented Mr Martin Burton. Unfortunately this issue the interviewee didn’t have time for a photoshoot so we had to use supplied PR shots which, although passable, were not nearly as beautiful as Martin’s work.

cover feature

Usually we have a couple of features on the same subject that warrant being linked by a design device while still appearing to be part of the magazine as a whole. The background texture, use of road-sign symbols and similar layouts mark the features below as separate from the others, but the fonts, layout grid and page furniture are the same throughout the magazine.

security feature design

...and again

I learn something new from every project I work on and, though I’ve designed CIO Connect magazine for eight years, I’m still trying to up my game & improve on the previous issue. It’s one of the most satisfying parts of the job and I really enjoy it.

The cover star is Sunny Lee of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, so I made a little racehorse for his feature. Neat, huh?

Here are a couple of other spreads from the magazine, including a lovely artwork from illustrator Tony Sigley:

That’s it for now – will be adding a few more bits of work this week, and blogging more fully about my site redesign too.

Yes, I do. It’s possibly my favourite thing to do. It’s all about retaining a united look for the whole publication, but differentiating articles from each other. Tis a fine balance. My general rules of thumb would be:

• choose a few key fonts. I’ve cut down the amount I use for each publication over the years; at present I probably use three font families with CIO Connect magazine, and two with Pulse. Body fonts, header fonts, subheads, captions and general page-furniture should all fit nicely together. Contrast the old with the new; pay attention to the rhythm and shapes of combinations of typefaces.

• restrict the palette of colours used for each article. Echo or juxtapose with the main imagery.

• and while we talk about imagery – the better this is, the better your publication will look. It’s not impossible, but it is time-consuming, frustrating and demoralising to polish a turd. If you’re relying on other people to send photos to you, get them your specs early and remind them often. Request professional photography. Nevertheless, you will be sent blurred dark low-resolution images. It’s a fact of life, like aging and Jimmy Carr.

• never underestimate how much structure – and therefore beauty – one can add with clever page furniture. Page numbers and kickers might seem like dull must-haves but, if done well and used with elegant column and margin proportions, they really lift and frame a page. They are like the eyebrows of the magazine, if you like.

As ever, click on the pics for bigger versions. And if you’d like me to design your magazine to look this good, get in touch!

You’re creating something that has to have a coherent look and feel and, in this case, complement the branding of CIO Connect the organisation. But each article must stand out in its own right as a unit separate from the rest. It’s getting this balance right that’s the difficult, and fun part. My aims are to keep the magazine looking fresh, elegant and dynamic, and to have the design reflect both the tone of the text and the various photography and illustration we use.

I’m particularly proud of this issue. It’s my favourite so far. I don’t feel I can claim too much credit though – I find the photography of Martin Burton and the illustrations of Tony Sigley very inspiring – they (to me) make it obvious how the rest of the article should look.

One thing that I image is a headache for all art editors is getting a consistent quality of photography from all contributors. Unless your Vogue magazine or some such, it’s often logistically impossible, for budgetary or distance reasons or whatever, to get a good photographer to the subject, so we have to rely on photos supplied by the interviewee or their PR. Some PRs seem to understand that if they send an amazing photo through, their client is more likely to be given priority in a spread. Unfortunately, most have yet to grasp this sacred truth, so the majority of photos I’m sent are low-resolution atrocities taken by amateurs, or at best, wooden head and shoulders shots taken in front of one of those terrible backgrounds photographers usually reserve for school photos. Puh-leeeze! I’ve been sent a passport photo in the past. No word of a lie. Anyway, for one particular spread we didn’t have many decent photos, so I did an illustration, and used the photos small. I’ve done illustrations for CIO Connect before, but only smooth glassy “brand” type ones of the marbles they have in their logo. This was my first splotchy ink-and-brush affair for them, on the subject of negotiation, and I’m rather happy with it. By the way, you can click on any of the images to see a bigger version.

CIO Connect asked me to create a brand for their annual conference, held in October. The title was “Business as Unusual”. I was to create a logo-illustration for the event, and supply designs for tickets, a microsite, brochures, newsletters, an invite for a PA party and all the surrounding bits and bobs to go with it.

The first thing I did was come up with some concepts for the logo-illustration. One was approved – a cube morphing into the CIO Connect marble, which I’d designed some time before.

After this, I could come up with the brochure design, which was created with in-house printing in mind (hence the 10mm border around everything):

I also designed an invite to go out to PAs of the CIOs invited to the conference, requesting their attendance at a party thrown for them. CIO wanted something elegant and a little more feminine, although not overly so (not all PAs are women and not all women appreciate girly designs). I came up with a design using Japanese cherry blossom and the CIO Connect green. It folds up, so that when placed on a desk with the green front towards you, the white back faces away and advertises the event to the PA’s CIO boss. Clever, see?

And the other significant thing I designed was the CIO Connect Conference microsite. I supplied a photoshop document and then a CSS wizard created the live site, which can still be found here at the moment. Here’s my original design:

Print consultant David Richards suggested that we design, proof-read and print the rest of the magazine first, and then bang out the eight-page section in the few days after the conference. I sent this section to press, and the printers inserted the new pages into the earlier ones, then printed and bound it. Bish bosh.

My motivation is always to keep it looking clean, fresh and professional, and never dull. Editor Mark Samuels is always pushing me to be creative & appreciates the importance of brilliant photography in making a magazine look as good as it can – making my job much easier, too.