THE NAVIGATOR

ROLE: I worked with a team of 12 to produce a monthly zine. My role on the team was as a Graphic Designer. Over the summer of 2017, The Navigator Student Press underwent a large rebrand going from a bi-weekly newspaper to a monthly zine. The role I had was to help layout content and have it print-ready. I was assigned to 22 pages. It was my responsibility to follow the updated brand guidelines, use student content such as stories and art to fill my sections. When there was extra space I had the ability to source out or create content on the spot to help finish off the zine. We would meet biweekly with the editors on the team and work together in curating the content and laying it out. In the year we produced 8 issues of The Navigator 

OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to create and release a new newspaper once a month. Over the summer of 2018, the whole newspaper was revamped and given a magazine-like appearance in size and layout. This visually gave an updated appearance to its ancestors. With such a massive redesign it was going to be jarring for our long-time audience, which has mostly been VIU staff members. The redesign was key in helping us build our new target audience.

CHALLENGES: After the redesign was complete our biggest challenge was shifting our target audience. Though the momentum started quickly, about halfway through the year the speed at which the Navigator was flying off the shelves was slowing down. To build the momentum back up, we started launching some student contests. We also worked hard to match student artwork with student articles. We also found that photographic-based work we better than drawings. In most context’s this was because it gave the reader a real-life example for a visual over an interpretation of an illustration. (it should be noted a lot of the student artwork that was submitted in a traditional medium leaned towards abstraction).