The College of Science and Engineering conducts cutting-edge research in a Big 10 University setting. This magazine needed to build the reputation and brand of the college while instilling pride and creating cheerleaders in its audience.
Inventing Tomorrow is a 36-page magazine with an annual distribution of 80,000. The magazine serves as the college’s largest, most visual student recruitment and donor stewardship piece, and the 2025 magazine contributed to the college exceeding its 2024-25 fundraising goals. In a 2025 alumni survey, more than 20% of respondents said they were more likely to recommend the college after reading the magazine and about 28% said they were more likely to give to the college after reading the magazine.
When I first started working with the magazine in 2017, it had an established template that the editorial team was committed to maintaining. Based on experience and internal polling, I suggested changes to make the publication feel more dynamic and engaging:
A dramatic redirection away from the posed headshot photos throughout every issue. I hired photographers with the skills I needed to capture action oriented images that grabbed attention and visually told our stories.
A magazine-wide topical focus. I worked with editorial to identify broad topics to focus storytelling in each issue.
Building on these successful changes, my team conducted a series of audience focus groups and comparative research to commit to a full redesign. While the audience of scientists and engineers continued to value detail and specificity, they responded positively to the engaging photos but were overwhelmed by some of the long-form features. We decided to pivot to prioritize larger, attention-grabbing images and illustrations, and the editorial would favor shorter, punchier stories peppered throughout with scannable facts and numbers.
The development of this award-winning Winter 2025-26 Inventing Tomorrow issue is a culmination of research, strategy and a focus on visual storytelling. We created an accessible website where visitors can page through the magazine stories, in addition to a PDF flipbook. I was part of every step of planning, art directing, editing, web design and production.
