Island Waves Magazine
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s newspaper, Island Waves, was experiencing issues with readership and leftover newspapers on the stands. They wanted to revamp their overall design to increase the number of papers being picked up. This project was a collaborative effort to turn Island Waves into a magazine rather than a newspaper. Our group decided that a magazine would be more appealing to their current audience, as well as more appealing to a wider range of readers beyond the current audience.
"We wanted the magazine to have a layout that was much more appealing to the eye."
Upon looking at the newspaper, we found that there were issues with the colors of photos and other small design elements. We also noticed that there were a lot of issues with the typography in the paper. The column widths of the stories were much too wide, making the paper a little difficult to read. Along with this, there was far too much text being put on one page with no visual breaks, like images, or even whitespace.
For our solution, we wanted the magazine to have a layout that was much more appealing to the eye. We changed to a more legible three-column layout. We figured that this would leave more opportunities for visual breaks in between text, such as whitespace, photos, and illustrations. We also broke up the content in the magazine by adding pages dedicated to ads and coupons. Adding a page dedicated to coupons would encourage more readers to pick up the paper.
Our main part of the solution was to include more art-related content, but also give the magazine an interactive element. We proposed that Island Waves should ask for submissions for original artwork to be displayed on the cover of the magazine as well as have a featured page dedicated to a brief statement about the artist, and a list of runner-ups. With this aspect in place, we thought it would be a great way to get the readers more involved, and bring in more readers from outside of campus, because whoever gets displayed on the cover will want to show it to their friends and family, which will make those people pick up the magazine as well.
"There were a lot of things to be learned from this project that I will be able to take with me into the real world."
Upon reflection, I think that this was a good project to do as a collaborative effort. It taught me how to really work with the team that I am given. The Island Waves team appreciated the thought that was put into the solution, and they appreciated that we tried to keep all of the things that were important to them in mind. It was good for me to learn how to make sure to keep up with my team members and really focus on the task at hand. Overall, there were a lot of things to be learned from this project that I will be able to take with me into the real world, and I’m glad I was able to get this experience in a classroom setting.
