This is the cover of the latest Discover RSA newsletter. This is the fifth edition that I have designed in this new format and style. I originally designed this newsletter in 2016, subsequently designing three further issues before the RSA handed the work to their in-house designer. I was approached again in early 2018 to update the design of the newsletter, which had now finally become a 16 page A5 booklet; a change I had planned in 2016, but never implemented as the Academy had not approved this move while I was in charge of the design.
The newsletter takes visual cues from the design of the RSA Friends membership leaflet that I designed in 2018. The design is clean and rationalised, with a limited palette of colours and with just one typeface in different weights throughout. I used the burgundy that I had used in my refresh of the RSA Friends logo as an accent colour alongside an extended palette of greys. I typeset the newsletter in Aktiv Grotesk, a typeface that sits well with the Akzidenz Grotesk that I used on the logo and that is easy to read, even at a small scale. My original intention was to keep most of the typography aligned to the same baseline grid – however, over five issues, with varying amounts of copy and images to fit in, I have had to be more relaxed about being faithful to the grid, and, although there is an underlying rationale to the layout, I have had to be more playful, which has been strangely liberating!
I am particularly pleased with this cover, which features an image of a modified found ceramic piece by Jessica Harrison.