Context
Cover
Template Creation
Report of Gifts
Print & Digital
Afterword
The McLean School’s Bi-Annual Publication
44 pages redesigned cover to back.
TeamCommunications & Marketing Office
Elizabeth Shannon, editor; photography by Paul Belliveau, Elizabeth Shannon, Andrew Ship, and me
McLean's newsletter/magazine hybrid is a bi-yearly publication mailed to 1,800 households across both campuses, with a digital edition published on Flipsnack. It covers news, alum stories, events, and the annual Report of Gifts.
This Fall 2025 issue was the first one I redesigned cover to back. For years it opened straight onto the Head of School's letter, with no cover at all. Working within the school's brand, I gave it a real front, a repeatable template system, and a fundraising section designed with the same care as the features.
The publication never had one. It just began with the Head's letter. So the first thing I built was a proper cover: a full-bleed student portrait, a real masthead, and the school's mission set quietly in the background as a field of text. The Head's letter moved inside, where a letter belongs. This one change made it feel like a real publication instead of a stapled bulletin.
Copy changed constantly and the page count runs in multiples of four, so designing 44 unique pages was never going to work. Instead I built a few repeatable spread types: a feature, a profile, an event recap. Each has its own logic, with display serif headlines, a consistent grid, and a set way photos and captions sit. The book holds together as a whole but can absorb endless last-minute edits without falling apart.
Twenty-plus pages of donor names. I gave it its own cover, rebuilt the giving charts in the school's palette, and wove photography through the lists so a wall of names stays interesting to flip through.
The issue also lives online through Flipsnack, and I made the links throughout the book clickable. Someone reading the digital edition can tap an event or a page reference and go straight there, so the online version works as its own experience instead of a scan of the print one.