Magazines
Design + Art Direction
Role:
Art Director, Designer
Art Director, Designer
Client:
Various
Various
Year:
2008-2014
2008-2014
Context
I started my career in editorial magazines, first as an assistant designer at The Weekend Australian magazine, before moving onto design for Jetstar Magazine, Australian Men's Health, Australian Prevention, Popular Mechanics and Fast Company (and freelancing for dozens more in between). Each one was a monthly print product fighting for attention against everything else on the newsstand, and each had its own identity, readership and editorial tone.
Challenge
Every layout had two jobs. It had to convey the story's idea at a glance, and it had to make a stranger browsing a newsstand curious enough to pick it up. Both had to work inside a different brand every time. A feature in a car magazine needs a completely different approach from the same story in a tech title, so I had to learn each magazine's voice quickly and design inside it with confidence.
The pace and the budget made it harder. As Art Director of Jetstar Magazine, I was the whole design team, and I had to deliver 114 pages every month. The only way to get there was to design 8 pages a day, so the final stretch of the month was left clear for feedback from the managing editor, the changes that followed and the unforeseen, like illness. A deadline like that only works with discipline, not last-minute heroics.
Monthly budgets were tight too. Most stories couldn't have newly commissioned photography, and this was before generative AI, so a lot of the visual had to come from a strong idea rather than something we could buy.
Craft
I started every story with the concept. What is the one idea this spread is about, and how do I say it visually before anyone reads a word? Each concept had to serve what the story needed editorially while also supporting the magazine's business goal of lifting monthly circulation.
Then I built it myself. I'm hands-on in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, which let me move fast, try ideas quickly and hand over work that was close to final.
At Jetstar Magazine, that was the whole job. As Art Director of a design team of one, I set the direction and I also designed every element of every page: layouts, typography, image treatments and production-ready files. It gave me hands-on experience across every part of a magazine's design.
Because the budget was limited, we spent it deliberately. Often the money for new photography was saved for the cover story, which became that month's one photoshoot. Those shoots didn't happen every issue, but when they did I was there, working with the photographer and Photo Editor to get images that could carry both the cover and the layouts inside.
Everything else had to come from ideas and craft. "The One That Got Away", for Australian Prevention, is a good example. My brief was to adapt the US edition's design, but the original layout was flat and predictable: a female model jogging outside. I saw room to push it further.
The story was about how many women in the magazine’s older readership weren’t getting enough Omega-3 in their diets. After some rough sketches, I landed on the concept: the missing Omega-3 as a fish that has swum away. It heads off across the right-hand page, and the fishing hook meant to catch it misses and snags a letter of the headline instead. With no budget for a commissioned shoot, the image was built in Photoshop from water, splash elements, a hook and a fish.
Outcome
Working like this taught me three things I still rely on. A strong concept can beat a small budget. A schedule built around the deadline, not up to it, is what leaves room for good work. And knowing where to spend the budget, often on a single cover-story shoot, matters as much as how you spend it. That's the same approach I use today, and it's why I'm as comfortable pitching the big idea, or being on a set, as I am opening Photoshop to make it.
Context
I started my career in editorial magazines, first as an assistant designer at The Weekend Australian magazine, before moving onto design for Jetstar Magazine, Australian Men's Health, Australian Prevention, Popular Mechanics and Fast Company (and freelancing for dozens more in between). Each one was a monthly print product fighting for attention against everything else on the newsstand, and each had its own identity, readership and editorial tone.
Challenge
Every layout had two jobs. It had to convey the story's idea at a glance, and it had to make a stranger browsing a newsstand curious enough to pick it up. Both had to work inside a different brand every time. A feature in a car magazine needs a completely different approach from the same story in a tech title, so I had to learn each magazine's voice quickly and design inside it with confidence.
The pace and the budget made it harder. As Art Director of Jetstar Magazine, I was the whole design team, and I had to deliver 114 pages every month. The only way to get there was to design 8 pages a day, so the final stretch of the month was left clear for feedback from the managing editor, the changes that followed and the unforeseen, like illness. A deadline like that only works with discipline, not last-minute heroics.
Monthly budgets were tight too. Most stories couldn't have newly commissioned photography, and this was before generative AI, so a lot of the visual had to come from a strong idea rather than something we could buy.
Craft
I started every story with the concept. What is the one idea this spread is about, and how do I say it visually before anyone reads a word? Each concept had to serve what the story needed editorially while also supporting the magazine's business goal of lifting monthly circulation.
Then I built it myself. I'm hands-on in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, which let me move fast, try ideas quickly and hand over work that was close to final.
At Jetstar Magazine, that was the whole job. As Art Director of a design team of one, I set the direction and I also designed every element of every page: layouts, typography, image treatments and production-ready files. It gave me hands-on experience across every part of a magazine's design.
Because the budget was limited, we spent it deliberately. Often the money for new photography was saved for the cover story, which became that month's one photoshoot. Those shoots didn't happen every issue, but when they did I was there, working with the photographer and Photo Editor to get images that could carry both the cover and the layouts inside.
Everything else had to come from ideas and craft. "The One That Got Away", for Australian Prevention, is a good example. My brief was to adapt the US edition's design, but the original layout was flat and predictable: a female model jogging outside. I saw room to push it further.
The story was about how many women in the magazine’s older readership weren’t getting enough Omega-3 in their diets. After some rough sketches, I landed on the concept: the missing Omega-3 as a fish that has swum away. It heads off across the right-hand page, and the fishing hook meant to catch it misses and snags a letter of the headline instead. With no budget for a commissioned shoot, the image was built in Photoshop from water, splash elements, a hook and a fish.
Outcome
Working like this taught me three things I still rely on. A strong concept can beat a small budget. A schedule built around the deadline, not up to it, is what leaves room for good work. And knowing where to spend the budget, often on a single cover-story shoot, matters as much as how you spend it. That's the same approach I use today, and it's why I'm as comfortable pitching the big idea, or being on a set, as I am opening Photoshop to make it.
