Magazine design

Having started my career as a writer and progressed to editor, I found myself increasingly contributing to the design of the magazines I worked on, especially covers, and began to take freelance design work alongside my full-time editorial roles.

As Editor in Chief at MacUser, the computer bible of the UK creative industries, in the late 1990s, I worked with art director Paul Kurzeja to represent and support the cutting edge of the British design revival. Adopting a challenging graphical style that rejected the obvious and embraced the chaotic and tangential, we earned the respect of our influential readership.

As a freelance contractor, I’ve brought this experience to freelance clients in sectors including tech, telecoms and food, creating, redesigning and editing in-house, customer and specialist magazines as well as brochures, case studies and other marketing collateral. I’ve produced numerous one-off magazines and books, handling both design and editorial processes to increase time and cost efficiency for publishers.

I’ve also been able to contract out the production of newsstand magazines, giving otherwise financially unviable titles a new lease of life – including MacUser, which I was invited to take over in 2011. Combining the roles of Editor in Chief and Creative Director, and with overall responsibility for the editorial budget, I redesigned and rebranded the magazine. In 2013, my cover ‘How Evil is Apple?’ was selected by the PPA, the UK magazine industry’s trade body, as one of ten Covers of the Century 1913-2013.