The Florida Engineer is the alumni publication of the University of Florida's College of Engineering — and more than a magazine, it's a fundraising instrument. Distributed to alumni, donors, and the college's development network, its job is to remind graduates why their college is worth giving to. When I joined as Art Director — hired directly out of my senior internship, my first full role out of university — readership was at an all-time low. The magazine had lost its audience. My brief, working under the Editor-in-Chief in partnership with the development office, was to redesign it from the ground up and give people a reason to read it again.

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Approach

The development office was a core stakeholder, not a peripheral one. We worked with them directly to identify the content that would move alumni — major gifts, named gifts, research breakthroughs, faculty recognition — and built the editorial calendar around what served both the readers and the fundraising mission. The magazine needed to feel worth reading so that alumni would actually open it, because an unread magazine doesn't generate donations.

That meant a full redesign: new visual identity, new typographic system, new cover formula, new department templates — built from scratch under the Editor-in-Chief's editorial direction with my creative direction over everything visual.

The cover sets the register: a dramatic black-and-white portrait against a lime green field, "The Man, The Dream" as the feature headline. It doesn't look like a university publication — it looks like something you'd pick up. Inside, the table of contents uses a thumbnail navigation system with chevrons that lets readers find content type and page immediately, a structural template designed to carry forward issue to issue.

Each feature got its own visual treatment. "In Search of the Next Best Thing" leads with a keyboard-as-hero; "Hip Square" uses geometric shapes and formula typography as the design itself; The Savvy Engineer moves into a full illustrated infographic spread, with the illustrator working under close direction to keep the visual language consistent. Research stories and faculty profiles got the same editorial investment as any feature — because for an alumnus deciding whether to make a gift, a well-told story about what the college is doing with its resources is the argument.

The department templates — contributors, donors, alumni updates — were designed as systems the magazine could continue using after me. The alumni section turns a $600k giving milestone into a visual anchor rather than a footnote. The donors page was designed to make recognition feel meaningful, not obligatory.

I ran photo shoots and worked with photographers on brief, selects, and delivery. For written content, I collaborated with staff writers, guest contributors, the Alumni Association, and the development team — adapting material to layout and restructuring where needed.

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Outcomes

• Led a complete redesign of a publication that had lost its readership, with the explicit goal of re-engaging alumni to support college fundraising
• Worked in direct partnership with the development office to shape content strategy around major gifts and research milestones
• Designed reusable templates for every recurring department — contributors, donors, alumni updates — that the publication could carry forward
• Directed photography and illustration across the full issue
• Hired directly from my senior internship — my first full-time role out of university