Syracuse newspaper launches quarterly sports magazine
Our pal Darren Sanefski of Syracuse University sent us a sneak peek at Central New York Sports Magazine, set to publish later this month.
Darren writes:
A few months ago, after taking a buyout from the Post-Standard, the editor of their niche publications came to me and asked if I was interested in designing their new sports magazine. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to take what was basically a blank slate and design a brand new magazine. I have taught magazine design for years at Newhouse [That's the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication] and felt I was up to the task.
Darren Sanefski
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Before the actual design process began, one thing that had to be worked out was to figure out the target market. The magazine is all about sports but not just spectator sports. The magazine is going to cover Syracuse University sports, professional, and local high school sports, not to mention the person who enjoys being active.
These decisions made me think that I couldn’t design this publication like a major sports publication so I went more to a clean outdoorsy feel, like a crisp fall day. I looked at Men’s Health, Real Simple, ESPN the Magazine and Wired for my inspiration.
The first thing I did was figure out what crisp and clean fonts I wanted to use. I chose Helvetica Neue because of its clean feel and there were many versions I could choose in that font family. The second font was Rockwell, a simple yet clean slab-serif font that had a masculine feel to it. Also, the 90° angles on both these fonts worked well together.
Next I designed the nameplate Central New York SportsLife Magazine in Rockwell. Unfortunately at the 11th hour, just before it went to press the name changed to Central New York Sports Magazine, because of a similarly named publication. I was forced to shoehorn a new nameplate into the same space on the page. But that is how things sometimes go and it’s a good learning experience.
I went about designing the inside pages with the same idea in mind, crisp and clean with a lot of white space. I do feel that I need to revisit that idea because after I saw the first printed magazine I felt that the pages needed bigger margins. But as I tell my students, you learn more from your mistakes than your successes.
Overall this was a great learning experience and I have received many good responses to the design.
Read more here about Central New York Sports Magazine by Post-Standard sports columnist Bud Poliquin.