The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) came to us about revamping their annual report/newsletter. The DVBIA works to serve the collective interests of its member businesses, engaging in activities such as communications, sponsorship acquisition, ensuring cleanliness, and crime prevention, which helps to facilitate commercial success in Vancouver’s downtown core. This document relays information about business success in the downtown core, profiles local retailers and entrepreneurs, provides DVBIA financials, and includes articles about future invigoration possibilities for the area. Their intention was for us to provide a modern and stylish magazine design for future issues to follow.
Print
DVBIA Newsletter/Annual Report
What We Delivered:
- Annual Report/Newsletter
- Graphic Design
- Copyediting and Proofing
- Financial Reporting
The Challenge:
The DVBIA wanted us to create a design that would not draw the reader’s attention away from the content of the magazine while retaining an elegant and professional look. We wanted to bring forward a clean, modern west coast vibe to the newsletter that let the imagery shine on its own. Previous versions of their newsletter had been flooded with colour, including different coloured text within a single story, which had obscured the content and decreased readability. The new design cleared away the coloured text and used trendy typefaces to bring forward that crisp modern style. To ensure maximum information retention and accessibility, we came up with a design that would function as a receptacle for all of the content that our clients had deemed important.
I wanted to thank you for the hard work you put into our newsletter. It’s the best it has ever looked, and we are really happy with it!
Ivy Haisell
Member Services Manager, DVBIA
The Strategy:
Our design removed the DVBIA logo, which incorporated the Harbour Centre, and replaced it with a minimalistic and clear title. We maintained this minimalism and clarity throughout the rest of the document, using only a few hints of colour intermingled with the copy and the pictures. Having black text on the clean white backgrounds makes the content more accessible for readers. This stripped-down design also allows for the images to really stand out, especially on the cover of the Spring Edition. The cover photo is a futuristic representation of the development possibilities for Coal Harbour, and the striking blues of the sky and sea are stark and sharp against the subtle background of our design. The black and white colour scheme also made it as easy as possible to digest the financials, which are a very important section for the stakeholder businesses, included at the rear of the newsletter.
Our redesigned newsletter simplified the masthead, removing the Downtown Vancouver BIA logo which wasn’t working well as a title.
Results
This project culminated in the creation of a sleek and crisp newsletter, which showcased the DVBIA and highlighted its featured members in a simple and sophisticated manner. The client was especially pleased with the outcome of the project, and thanked us for the effort we invested in their newsletter, and for our patience working with them throughout the newsletter’s creation, which evolved on the fly several times.
