LAYOUT DESIGN
Eugene Mission Newsletter
CLIENT
The Eugene Mission is a private non-profit organization that provides immediate services and long-term solutions to the City of Eugene’s homeless. The Eugene Mission relies on grants and donors to support its programs, staff, and daily operations and ensure the best care possible for guests.
PROJECT
As a private organization, The Eugene Mission’s newsletter is key in sustaining and increasing donations from existing donors by keeping them engaged and informed. In 2019, The Eugene Mission came to AHM Brands looking to refresh the newsletter’s design and their strategy for generating content. We identified three major issues with the existing newsletter.
First, content consisted mainly of brief updates, invitations to events open to the community, and financial reporting. Staff felt the content needed to be more consistent and engaging to reach donors effectively. Second, the newsletter’s layout was cluttered and difficult for their aging audience to navigate. Third, a lack of content structure led to a stressful dash to generate enough monthly content for The Eugene Mission’s small outreach team.
CREDITS
Agency: AHM Brands
Creative Director: Tyler James
Associate Creative Director: Hollye Holbrook
Copy Writer: Geoff Shipley
Graphic Designer: Winn Osborn
DELIVERABLES
Monthly newsletter and e-newsletter
PEOPLE FIRST
Copy and photography focuses on current and former guests working to change their lives with the help of The Eugene Mission. Each newsletter includes one to two main stories, spotlighting a guest, program, or staff member with direct quotes and a combination of portrait and candid photography of guests immersed in recovery activities.
CLEAN
Guests and their stories come first. The design gives photography and stories as much space as possible to shine on the cover page and internal spread. Color blocking maintains the brand presence on every page and strengthens the modular design concept. All infographics are consistent with the Eugene Mission’s visual brand, and type is oversized to cater to the newsletter’s older audience.
CONSISTENT
Each page is dedicated to a specific type of content, giving The Eugene Mission staff a roadmap as they collect information and stories for the upcoming month. The page one, the cover page, is dedicated to the monthly “Letter From the Director” and a related banner photo. Page two, the internal spread, contains 1-2 feature stories centered on a guest, highlighted program, or project. Page three, the back cover, uses a modular layout where donation requests, community announcements, infographics, donation requests, and non-feature stories can be mixed and matched.
