Concept Design
You may have grown up seeing issues of Highlights magazines in your home or at the doctor’s office. I received subscriptions of this kids’ magazine for years as a child, and would pore over each issue’s iconic Hidden Pictures puzzles, brainteasers, stories, and more. To now work as a designer for the same family-owned magazine that I loved so much during my childhood is gratifying.
Highlights has grown into so much more than a kids’ magazine brand over the decades. As a Creative team, we underwent a brand refresh a few years ago in order to better portray the expansive, modern, fun brand that it is today. It’s been enjoyable to continue to evolve that refresh as new seasons, business priorities, and customer mindsets roll in.
Highlights for Children Today
Design Style Guides
I’ve gotten the opportunity to exercise a lot of creative freedom in one project in particular: our seasonal design style guides. Called our “creative projections”, these inform our design team what the look and feel of the upcoming season will be. The talented group of designers and art directors that I work alongside then takes this projection and uses it as a visual foundation for all marketing assets that they execute - email, website, social media, print pieces, and more.
Example of a style guide I provided to colleagues:
(including a hand-created, custom typeface!) ↓
Examples of work then executed by colleagues:
Product Launches
I’ve been tapped numerous times to develop a design direction for product launches or new marketing initiatives during my time at Highlights. Getting to essentially start from scratch and follow my “design compass” has been a gratifying exercise for me — especially once I see how my direction is then translated to all brand touchpoints by my teammates.
brainPLAY Magazine
The launch of brainPLAY magazine, Highlights’ first magazine launch in over a decade, was a particularly fun and exciting one for me. I was asked to develop a significant volume of launch email assets for the new magazine, which then ended up influencing launch assets and post-launch assets across all channels. The fresh, unique style of the puzzle magazine really inspired my work on these launch emails, and it was so enjoyable seeing these come to life.