
This is an in-house project for the Local World. The objective of this project was to modernise the Nottinghamshire Today publication. I acted as lead Designer and worked alongside management, marketing and collaborated with fellow Designers and Sub-Editors to accomplish the project’s goals.
The product:
Nottinghamshire Today is an exceptionally high quality, upmarket publication with a rich heritage. It delivers a taste of the finer things in life to a highly targeted section of Nottinghamshire.
The brief:
Aims – Make the magazine more relevant and increase advertising revenue.
Methods – Explore different audiences and platforms, also research potential marketing and distribution techniques. Create a new modern, iconic brand for the publication.
I was asked to focus on the re-brand and visual development of the project. See below for the process I followed and the work we produced.
The process:

The research phase started with looking at the target market.

Where do they live what do they do?

Who are the audience's heroes?

Part of the initial research carried out was analysing other publications that covered a portion of the target market.

I also researched the examples of layout could influence the publication's editorial style.

I started exploring visual themes along two lines. Option 1; This was the the more opulent, sharp, angular and minimalist approach.

Option 2; This approach was inspired by the rebrand of USA Today. Treating the brand as a window into the content centered around the circle.

After consulting and presenting my ideas to the working group I further developed the second approach.

After presenting a selection of designs this is the logo that was chosen.

I formulated typographic style guides. This was constrained by the fonts that were available to the editorial system at the Nottingham Post. So the brand could be consistent across commercial and editorial sides of the brand.

I experimented with colour coding sections of the magazine.

Further experimentation with colour coded sections bring in the circular theme.

I created mockups of the final magazine.

I created editorial and commercial brand guidelines, which are still in use and adhered to today.

I was also involved with the grid and layout of the magazine. This was a really good holistic approach to re-designing a publication from the ground up.

One of the first editions of the newly redesigned Nottinghamshire Today publication.

The first incarnation of the Nt website was based on WordPress and featured a selection of teaser articles. The intention was to encourage viewers to download the digital edition of the magazine.

After a year from launch I reviewed the analytics for the Nt website. We decided the site to try a different tactic to increase downloads of the digital edition. Additionally we had increased constraints on time for updating and maintenance.

This is the mockup I created for the website.

Further visualisations for the Nt site.