Creative / art direction | Print design | web design
Fraud Magazine
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I took over as art director of Fraud Magazine in 2011. The magazine’s first issue published in 1988. For more than 20 years, the publication existed in the form of a scholarly journal, both in writing style and design. The magazine was struggling to keep pace with competitors, draw attention to profile stories and highlight interesting fraud topics in a modern and innovative way.
Print design
In early 2012, I implemented a complete redesign of the magazine. The goal of this redesign was to provide readers with engaging content that would be easy to digest. The design had to support this goal, as well as elevate the magazine’s brand past a scholarly journal and more towards a modern, innovative financial magazine.
Design progression of Fraud Magazine: The left cover illustrates the style prior to my promotion to art director. The cover on the right reflects the early stages of my experimentation with creativity for the cover design.
Design progression of Fraud Magazine: I redesigned the logo to reflect a more modern and bold aesthetic. I also implemented flexibility to change the masthead logo color for a more cohesive cover design. Previously the logo was only being used in red or gold. I also began experimenting with stronger typography, using Bebas Neue as a primary headline font.
After the implementation of the redesign, results of a reader survey indicated overwhelmingly positive responses to the new look. The feedback and comments indicated readers found the new design clean, modern and delightful to read.
Website design
The magazine’s website needed an overhaul to match the print edition, and to provide members an easy way to access valuable content online.
Working with developers, editors and content managers, I took the team through a thorough process of design-centered thinking. We began with user surveys and research to better understand how the site was being used. Our research helped us identity how the user experience could be improved. These insights allowed us to map out an information architecture that was better organized, intuitive and easy to navigate.
During the research phase, I used competitive analysis to draw inspiration and best practices for content-rich sites. I created wireframes, mood boards and high fidelity mock-ups to take the team through various iterations of UI designs. These were ultimately used in my design presentations to upper management.
In the build phase, I worked with our developers to design clear and usable interactions across all devices. The result was a responsive site that provides easily accessible content, presented with modern design that mirrors the print magazine.
Our team has continued to make improvements since the launch. In fact in 2017, total page views went up 83% and the bounce rate went down to nearly 90%.
App design
With an accompanying responsive website, the magazine became much easier to read on any digital device. However, after examining the results of our surveys and talking to members, we realized we still needed a dedicated mobile app. Many members wanted the ability to read the magazine offline on their devices, particularly those overseas with limited access to high speed internet and/or the print magazine.
I partnered with our assistant editor to manage the project of overhauling our app (the app we had was nothing more than an interactive pdf). We distilled our requirements down to a list of musts for the app. We met with several local app developer firms, however many were too custom and expensive for our needs, or didn’t have the experience building a content driven app.
After reaching out to various contacts, one of my friends put me in touch with Chris Perez of Left Right Media. Chris' team had experience building media apps and wasted no time getting to work on the project.
I worked with the team throughout the process to ensure the design was on brand with our print magazine and website. Together we went over strategy, proof-of-concepts, structure, interactions and the final launch plan.
Since our launch in September, the app has had 71,153 downloads and 3,534 fresh installs.