For over a decade, I've had the privilege of designing for Baseball America. I created a huge amount of content in the fast-paced, deadline-driven, ever-changing environment of a media company.

In 2017, I was thrilled to be able to redesign Baseball America, with a focus on telling stories in a more rich and visual way, while exploring ways to drive print traffic to the web and social media. 

We knew our current readers loved dense "inside baseball" information: long stories, lots of stats, and tons of information. My challenge was to open up the pages to be more appealing to a broader consumer audience — we expanded our newsstand distribution — while also maintaining the quality of journalism our core consumers expected.

I took this as an opportunity to push us out of our design comfort zone. The magazine had a history of being very dense, valuing narrative over aesthetic. By applying careful focus to typography and white space, I built templates that forced things to feel more open and clean. This not only gave us a chance to showcase our huge photography archive, it let the stories themselves breathe and be easier to read.

The redesign required a lot of cross-departmental discussion about how we tell stories. I challenged us to change how we think about content: Can a 1,000-word story be told as well in 500 words by using great art? Do we need to present information in words, or can we tell it better as an infographic? It was a big and bold cultural shift in how we thought about what we do, and I'm proud of where we ended up.

Lastly, a main goal of the redesign had to be to drive traffic to our website and social media channels. To remind readers of our robust online content, I incorporated teasers at every turn. Tidbits at the top of each department give readers a sneak peek of what's waiting for them on the website. Stories now reference multi-media content that let readers dive even deeper into a subject. Each cover became a way to drive people to our gear coverage online (and make our advertisers happy), by listing what the cover subject was wearing and promoting our expert product reviews. These then link to an online store, which we used as an opportunity to partner with outside clients such as Louisville Slugger, Easton, Nike, etc.

Graphic design can act be the central element of storytelling, weaving together text, photos, video footage, maps and data.

Baseball America is involved in many events that need strong branding. We hold an annual awards gala at Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings. A few years ago, we created the Prospect Pad at the All Star Game — a place where up-and-coming players can hang out, get fitted for equipment, and be interviewed on our big red couch. We even provide a barber for last-minute touch-ups so players can look sharp before their big debuts in the Futures Game.

Part of my job was to create the marketing collateral for the events, including the program handed out to fans at the stadium.

The baseball cards were a collaboration with Topps, and ran in print and on social media. They were a huge hit with players, many of whom used the cards as their avatars.

Features design can sometimes be about doing big things on small deadlines: from using bold type treatment to carry a spread to creating an illustration out of action photography that otherwise wasn’t strong enough on its own.

Other times, its about working with photographers to orchestrate a great shoot, or hiring an illustrator to stylize a piece.