Professional Liability Magazine

In April of 2017, I was tasked with rebooting the firm newsletter, Professional Liability Monthly. It hadn't been published since November of 2016, and before that had been stalled again for a few months. The goal was to once again start publishing the newsletter on a regular basis, and to make it more engaging. I presented the idea of turning the newsletter into a magazine, with dedicated sections that included different styles of articles such as a Q&A and top five list, in addition to mid-length and deep dive analysis pieces. In doing research on competing publications, I discovered no one was publishing under the name "professional liability magazine," leaving the keyword SEO for a common legal phrase also open to capture. During my reboot pitch, I suggested we change the name to Professional Liability Magazine to own the SEO, remove the monthly publication restriction, and indicate to readers that PLM is an entirely new type of publication. 

September 2017 Issue

The September PLM Spotlight article featured two interviews in addition to the main narrative. While each interview was able stand on its own, I wanted to incorporate them into the layout of the main article. As a digital-first publication, it was also important that the reader understood the difference between the sidebars and the narrative. To accomplish both of these goals, I utilized color blocking for the interviews, and added page continuation notes to help guide the reader.

October 2017 Issue

In the October issue of PLM, I incorporated InDesign's interactivity capabilities into the Q&A and an ad. While I had linked the corporate logo and URL to the firm's website throughout the magazine since its launch, this marked the first time functionality was brought into the main content. I decided to add an icon indicating click/tap functionality, as well as a note, because other projects have indicated a low level of digital literacy when it comes to intuitive navigation.

February 2018 Issue

The February issue of PLM is the first one published following the firm's updated style guidelines. Previously, the magazine used Berling for the masthead, Century Gothic for article titles, and Arial for body copy. Prior to beginning layout on the February issue, I flipped all of the titles and body copy to Lato to match other materials produced by the firm. In updating the publication fonts, I was able to fix inconsistencies in spacing, and streamline paragraph styles for future use.