Inventing Tomorrow Magazine

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 a distribution that has grown to 78,500 annually.

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.

A 2025 survey of alumni revealed that 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.

The development of this award-winning Winter 2025-26 Inventing Tomorrow issue is a culmination of research, strategy and a focus on visual storytelling.

Photo Direction and Issue Focus

When I started working with the magazine, it had an established template that the editorial team was committed to maintaining. Within that framework I wanted to suggest changes to make the publication feel more dynamic and engaging.

I polled colleagues, faculty and alumni about whether they could identify any particular previous issues. The one reliably remembered was "the women's issue," featuring all-female story subjects.

So with my first issue as art director, I successfully pitched two changes: a dramatic redirection away from the strict posed headshot photos throughout every issue and a magazine-wide topical focus. I hired photographers with the skills I needed to capture action oriented images that grabbed attention and visually told our stories. I worked with editorial to identify broad topics to focus storytelling in each issue. This was the result:

Photo Direction and Topics

I polled colleagues, faculty and alumni about whether they could identify any particular previous issues. The one reliably remembered was "the women's issue," featuring all-female story subjects.

Before

After

Visual and Editorial Redesign

Building on these successful marginal changes, the team conducted a series of audience focus groups and comparative research to commit to a full redesign of Inventing tomorrow. 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 the whole magazine would 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 first redesigned issue received a strong, positive response.

Before

After