Valuation Magazine - Redesign
Publisher:
Grayton Integrated Publishing
Client:
Appraisal Institute
Circulation:
17,000
Audience:
Valuation is distributed quarterly to members of the Appraisal Institute -- a global professional association of real estate appraisers -- as well as to non-Appraisal Institute professionals who subscribe to the magazine.
Distribution Methods: Print, with PDF replica posted to client’s website
Client Objectives:
Valuation magazine serves primarily as a resource for the practice of the valuation profession. Through relevant, credible content, the publication aims to inform, educate, and update Appraisal Institute members about the profession (the business of being an appraiser) and about the association’s efforts on behalf of its members. The client wished to redesign and refresh the publication.
EXECUTION:
Challenges:
The previous design was quite busy, with many extraneous “bells and whistles” that detracted from rather than supported the magazine’s messaging. Valuation’s executive editor was concerned that in many cases valuable content was not reaching readers because of a design that conveyed the wrong tone or was overly busy. Therefore, the goals of the redesign were to:
- Enable the content to step forward, with the design being secondary.
- Present the content in a clean, crisp, businesslike format.
- Underscore for readers that the content is valuable, trustworthy, and credible.
Solutions:
To give readers better access to Valuation’s information, we created a clean, sophisticated design as well as upgraded the editorial architecture. Improvements included:
- Reorganizing/restructuring several departments to make categories of information clearer and more logical for the reader.
- Renaming several departments and writing more meaningful slugs for the features.
- Eliminating the distracting design bells and whistles and incorporating more white space.
- Simplifying the typography to better convey the hierarchy of information and to make the publication more scannable.
- Changing the art approach to rely less on stock images and focus more on imagery of the real people and places that are featured in the articles.
RESULTS:
Although there has not been a formal reader survey since the redesign, anecdotal reader response overall has been positive. Valuation’s executive editor reports that he is now more confident that the intended messaging is reaching readers. Unlike in the past when the design treatment didn’t match the tone of the editorial content, today both design and editorial convey a crisp, clean, businesslike voice that’s more representative of the Appraisal Institute and its members.