A magazine of significance.
One of the top-ranked independent high schools in the United States, The Lawrenceville School’s stellar reputation spans two centuries of educating high-achieving young scholars, athletes, and artists. A new Strategic Plan inspired the Office of Communications to redesign their flagship print magazine, The Lawrentian, to better align with the institution’s goals. They also envisioned the development of a companion website to ensure engagement with alumni across mediums.
Research & Strategy
Research and assessment revealed that the outgoing magazine succeeded on many fronts, and reader surveys suggested a positive impression. Our work became an exercise of preservation, refocusing, and enhancement. We were delighted by the magazine’s existing content and clever writing, but the publication hadn’t been updated in over a decade. An on-campus workshop revealed opportunities to better align the magazine with the vision, personality, and unique traits of The Lawrenceville School and its community. One of the School’s core tenets offered a valuable mandate: foster open dialogue and inject diversity of voice.
We listened thoughtfully to the editorial team’s wants and needs, collaborating closely with them to devise a new strategic framework, develop new departments that better align with institutional goals, and ensure surprise and appeal in the year-round publishing schedule.
Format Design
A new nameplate pulls inspiration from the outgoing magazine design, signaling readers: this change honors your heritage. Well-loved content areas remain, but get fresh vitality and appeal from a bold new format.
The redesigned interior reworks departments and section heads, shifting focus to The Lawrentian’s pithy headline writing. A comprehensive new type palette juxtaposes tradition with contemporary: a modern re-envisioning of soulful 1800’s wood type harkens back to the School’s founding, and is complemented by a fashionably sharp oldstyle workhorse. A flexible grid system makes density an asset, with well-written stories dropping into new departments that bring structure, organization, and creative opportunity across a unique, condensed size.
Issue Design
Issue design uses a strategic approach that encourages flexibility and experimentation to maintain a page-turning pace across 80-pages of editorial and class notes. Sophisticated design, graphic minimalism, engaging headlines, and striking imagery combine to pull readers into important and well-told stories. Balancing commissioned photography and illustration with stock imagery, on-campus assets, and typographic solutions makes wise use of resources. The inaugural issue’s remarkable Feature stories gave the magazine’s new design the best possible introduction. (Thanks, Sean!)
The redesign of The Lawrentian was buoyed by a true collaborative partnership with the remarkable team at Landesberg Design. The new magazine is exactly what I needed it to be: a beautiful publication whose design complements our editorial strengths, and reflects the people and place it represents.
Sean Ramsden Editor, The Lawrentian
Website Design and Development
Visit SiteThe new responsive website mirrors the graphic appeal of the print magazine, with nuanced content restructuring to reward digital user behaviors and build a strong readership on its own. The website encourages usage of the robust archives and search, allowing easy browsing of stories of interest across magazine issues past and present.