When my director told me it was time for a redesign of Wheaton Magazine last year, the innovator in me nearly jumped out of her seat with excitement. Uncharted territory! Creative collaboration! Blank slate!

To kick things off, we first administered an alumni survey to approximately 3,000 Wheaties about their impressions of Wheaton Magazine. Second, we hired Metaleap Creative, a design bureau spearheaded by José and Nikolle Reyes in Atlanta, to redesign our print piece. Their firm has been recognized by the Evangelical Press Association, GAMMA, the City and Regional Magazine Association, The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and more for their award-winning redesigns of Christianity Today, byFaith, Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Washingtonian magazine, and Georgia State University Magazine. Third, we hosted Metaleap on campus for two days of intensive meetings with key stakeholders and alumni members to discover how to translate the heart of Wheaton into a compelling publication.

Using insights gained from our survey analysis and focus groups, we created the product before you. Let me point out five key components: 

• Format: The magazine’s word count is now approximately half of what it used to be, and you’ll see quite a bit of illustration throughout the magazine—artistic concepts integrated for their sophistication and flexibility.
  
• Connecting the past to the present: We have archival moments and our alumni news section to connect the “old” to the “new.”
• Navigation: Find “splash pages” throughout the magazine to clearly separate our editorial departments. 
• Creative elements: The graphic color bar on the right side of the print book and on the left side of the website is a graphic grounding moment—a kaleidoscope that will shift and change with every publication. 
• Revised elements: Letters to the Editor are now published online, faculty publications have moved to the Faculty News department, and Published Alumni is contained within the alumni news pages. 

Though change can sometimes be unsettling, I am thrilled with the new design and hope you enjoy it, too. Let us know your thoughts via email or snail mail—this magazine wouldn’t be the same without you. 

For Christ and His Kingdom,

Allison Althoff Steinke ’11

editor@wheaton.edu