Creating Standout Alumni Magazines

Concordia University, St. Paul is a private university that specializes in delivering a high-quality education to students with a diverse slate of backgrounds, goals, and needs. The university’s 35,000+ alumni live and work in over 25 countries across the globe, and its biannual alumni magazine reaches 28,000 Concordia constituents across the country.

Alumni magazines are critical tools for higher education institutions — they help keep myriad stakeholders aware and engaged with campus events, giving opportunities, and university success stories — but they can be difficult to produce when staff resources are limited. Several years back, the CSP Alumni Relations team reached out to Upswing for help with layout and design for their summer and winter magazines — and we’ve partnered with them to design the publications ever since.

Creating Concordia’s alumni magazine is a true exercise in partnership. Twice a year, we sit down with their team to discuss the stories they’ve gathered and written for the upcoming issue. We identify the recurring ideas, values, and themes in the content to inform the visual execution of the magazine. With these things in mind, we provide CSP with multiple design treatments to choose from.

Once we’ve landed on a visual execution, we rely on client-supplied photos, clever layout techniques, custom illustrations, and great design to bring the magazine to life. Using our expertise in development and alumni relations — in tandem with the content written by the folks at CSP — we create beautiful magazines that give readers a seamless blend of words and visual, that keep them connected to the university they love.