Galway Chamber Magazine
Working within the existing brand guidelines of the Chamber of Ireland, I was asked to design their first ever magazine to be published online and in print. The existing guidelines included the color palette and typeface Avenir. I proposed the change to Avenir Next which had more generous tracking which gave headings a more contemporary appearance.
The design system was inspired by Galway Chambers vision statement “Galway at the leading edge”. A banner or ‘edge’ at the top of the magazine cover is used with black on white for strong contrast. The edge also allows for ease of use and less need for image control. What I noticed with the other chamber magazines that used full bleed images was that the headings often had little contrast when overlayed on images which were not carefully selected. Using this ‘edge’ would remove the possibility of this happening as any image can seamlessly be put in and will always appear consistent with the black and white across the top.
The edge shape is carried over to elements such as running heads and graphs and as background monotone tints to divide up blocks of information. A thin ‘edge’ is also used alongside the columns of text to create better structure and make the reading experiece more sophisticated to reflect the business nature.