Boomer Magazine (Copy) — Ray Burgess Design Portfolio

Project Parameters

Create a 68 page monthly publication to be mailed to Folsom and El Dorado Hills homes. The target audience were adults ages 55-76 (Aka. Baby Boomer Generation).

I was lead designer on the project, but all designs were approved by the team Art Director and, in months that were especially busy, our publisher/designer would assist on portions of the article design.

Overview

The largest project that I have tackled in my career, the Boomer magazine challenged me to create and maintain an appealing and consistent visual theme over multiple publications while also ensuring every magazine looked unique and eye catching. The goal was to create a publication that was clear and easy to navigate but featured bright colors and bold design trends to bring a youthful appeal to the magazine.

Fonts

Because Boomer Magazine was targeted to the “baby boomer” generation and older, it was important that the body copy be easily legible to those with limited or fading eyesight. So I chose Gotham as the primary body copy for its increased legibility and large assortment of fonts within the larger font-family.

Qualion was chosen as a secondary header font for its more elegant structure and unique glyph choices. Providing the professional feel to the magazine without sacrificing legibility and pairing well visually with Gotham.

Cover Designs

BOOMER-0719-PAGE 1 COVER No Indicia Box.jpg

Challenges

Being one of the largest projects I have taken charge of, it also came with some of the greatest challenges. The two most glaring of which were time and image gathering.

Because the publication was only one of many secondary publications made by Style Magazine’s small team, there was not a large enough budget or manpower to gather custom photos for Boomer articles and covers. So we had to heavily lean on stock photography and whatever I could create within the production time. Challenging me to find creative ways to utilize stock materials while still maintaining a style unique to the publication.

The second and much larger challenge was the time that I had to complete Boomer. Time management became incredibly important as I had to juggle my work on Boomer with my already existing workload of ad design for all of Style Media Group’s publications (Style Magazine, Boomer Magazine, The Savings & Entertainment Guide, & more). As well handling the layout of The Savings & Entertainment Guide, and the digital posting of all of the previously mentioned publications and advertising. All of which had to be completed within our monthly publication schedule.