2010 Hazelden annual report

This is the third time I’ve worked on this project and by far my favorite edition. As with the other Hazelden annuals, I had a lot of fun with the design and working with Hazelden writer Teri Ryan and production manager Dawn Carlson.

We became even more ambitious than usual and decided to do something we’d always talked about: feature not just real stories from the people of Hazelden, but also real portraits.

Above, the three portraits and their spreads. Below, the cover and inside front spread.

Coming up with original photography of people from all over the country can be quite a challenge, especially on a limited budget. And these weren’t simple head shots — we needed portraits suitable for the high-profile piece.

This year with a lot of planning, help from Teri, and a fair amount of luck, it all worked out. We wound up doing something different for each person. One of our subjects had an awesome portrait already available, taken by a photographer friend who was willing to donate her work. (Thank you, Rebecca McDonald of B Fresh Media!) We hired pro photog John Tracy out of Chicago to do a photo session with a school principal there. And I did a photo shoot with our last subject, a Twin Cities local.

It’s a more effective piece for it. Stock photography can be compelling and certainly has its uses. But for something as personal as telling the stories of Hazelden, I like this solution best.

2010 Saint Paul Area Council of Churches annual report

Initial annual report planning meetings with Saint Paul Area Council of Churches Development Director Kristi Anderson and Communications Coordinator Melanie Lund revealed that a new direction was needed. We knew we wanted to feature stories from the many programs to which the Council provides a home. We also admired non-profits who were able to streamline their annual report basics into a compact, user-friendly format, also suitable as a marketing piece.

What emerged was the idea to combine their regular newsletter Faith Works — always packed with stories — with a wraparound piece. I worked closely with the printer, Impressive Print, to keep printing and mailing costs low despite the many changes. The end result was a huge success, which did not cost the Council any more than typical. Our audience went out of their way to tell us they loved the new format, and the Council now has a great, succinct marketing tool they can use all year long.

Top, inside spread of the wraparound piece. Bottom left, front cover of annual report. At right, companion issue of Faith Works.

The Saint Paul Area Council of Churches has been keeping me quite busy lately, creating new brochures, redesigning their Faith Works newsletter, and much more. Their colorful identity was originally created by Tilka Design and has been a lot of fun to work with.

Here are some of the new brochures and the refreshed Faith Works newsletter. Click the images for .pdfs.

New Council brochures and newsletter make good use of a colorful brand palette. My roles in both projects: write, edit, design, production.

Prior to this series of projects, I came from working extensively with Hazelden, where I worked, coincidentally, with their Tilka-designed identity, this time on a 60th annual report:

Other clients keeping me busy these days:

ThreeWire — patient recruitment materials: concepting, design and production, including building a Joomla! website

ATK — proposal editing and graphics creation

ICMA-RC — employee newsletters and other human resources materials

Not too long ago I completed another project for Hazelden, a graphic for their Strategic Plan. Logo development is always challenging and fun, and this wasn’t unlike developing a logo, except perhaps for the fact that it had to potentially convey a great deal of information at a glance. That is, the concept needed to be scalable, with the idea was that one could “zoom in” on an area of the plan to gain greater detail and level of understanding.

As with all the Hazelden projects I’ve done, I worked closely with writer Teri Ryan to develop this concept, back and forth which is always rewarding professionally and also makes the end result much improved for it.

The logo is ready for application in a variety of formats, and I provided Hazelden with a couple shown here: a one-sheet summary document and a PowerPoint template. You can download a .pdf of the summary document [although it will have lorem ipsum text in place, to preserve confidentiality].