Doug Sternberg

I wanted to show an example of how I go about brainstorming and developing concepts from sketch to final.

When I worked at Rhode Island Monthly magazine, we had suggested to our publisher what the market needed was deeper dives into local businesses doing big things and making noise on the national stage.

Maybe because of its size—or lack thereof—and its location, tucked in at the east end of Connecticut and below southeastern Massachusetts, the Ocean State is not the first place that comes to mind for big business. That was our rationale for suggesting this.

It should be. Rhode Island has some amazing business stories to tell and we should be the ones to tell it.

So, the publisher and my creative director asked me to come up with the design concept, the tagline, some cover ideas and copy to see what we can do.

The first three slides are name and mast ideas. The next two slides after that are initial cover ideas. 

The three previous attempts weren't cutting it.

'Good Company' was too close to 'Fast Company,' another newsstand business publication. 

The second iteration wasn't making a strong enough statement and the third one with the anchor as part of the 'A' was a graphic too overdone if you lived in Rhode Island.

But we liked the name, 'BRAND' a lot.

The next slide shows a strong, simple, efficient mast that makes a statement and ties back to Rhode Island in a subtle way.

These next two slides show the mast and the look and feel of how we wanted every future cover to be.

The general consensus was the circle that makes the 'branded' 'R' in the title was not enough of a metaphor tying the state to the magazine. So, we added the 'RI' after—but within—the graphic build of BRAND so readers didn't read it as one word—BRANDRI.

My argument for the look and feel of the book was attitude and underdog.

I wanted to go with big, strong, thought-provoking concepts that make the reader think to themselves, "Didn't know they could do that here...."

Lucky for us, the launch of the magazine just so happened to coincide with the election of the state's first female governor who just happened to have the temerity to solve the state's largest, decades-long fiscal challenge—the state workers' pension deficit.

The next four covers—and their accompanying cover feature openers—are the real thing with timely topics that resonated with our readers and spurned conversations of change and pride in the smallest state in the union.

This last set of slides is the online marketing campaign that I designed and wrote to promote BRAND RI through our various email newsletters as well as Rhode Island Monthly's flagship website.

I wanted to tie the campaign to what people saw in the magazine to strengthen the brand and to deliver that attitude we were striving for with the feel of BRAND RI.