Bee Culture Magazine

I started in September 2021, learning from the previous designer for 30+ years. In January 2022 she retired and I became the only designer for Bee Culture. Our team also shrunk to only three people: myself as the designer, an advertiser and customer service person, and the editor of about five years, who is our resident bee expert.

Some of my current responsibilities:
- Customer Service (most of this has been designated to our advertiser)
  - Communication: phone calls, emails
  - Subscriptions: entry, renewals
- Graphic Design
  - Magazine: entire process from collection of articles to submitting for print, ads as needed
  - Digital Magazine: creation of digital elements concurrently with the print design process, export and upload onto the website and email
  - General Design: the creation of a consistent brand, mailings, monthly honey report letter, Bee Culture-specific media, employee council media, and Bee Culture-specific ads as needed
- Other
  - Author Payments: work with the editor to define how much each author gets paid and collect necessary documents to pass along to our AP department
  - Files: creating and keeping a consistent file system within my files, cleaning and organizing the files of the previous designer to keep access to essentials, cleaning and organizing the files of the Bee Culture cloud files to keep access to essentials
  - Forms: creation of Google Forms for a variety of purposes including a new digital honey report option, a large-scale survey, and a new Classifieds section of the magazine

I work directly with our editor for the collection and order of all articles in every issue. I work alongside our advertiser for the update and creation of any ads that may be required, both for print and digital as well as, work in tandem to cover all areas of customer service questions.

During my time as the designer, I have done many updates to the magazine. Below are three main features that I changed.
The first was to redesign the Table of Contents. Previously it was on two separate pages separated by 3-4 ads and wasn't in order. I changed it to be on facing pages and everything is in order as is in the magazine. I differentiated the regulars and the in-house contents from everything else by color.
The next thing I redesigned was the End It mark. Previously, it was a "BC" in a black box. First, I created a new BC in a hexagon shape to mimic a honeycomb. That was used for all of 2022. Then for 2023 to current, I use the BC shortform logo.
I also updated how photo captions look to make them more obvious. Previously the captions were just italicized font at a slightly different text size, somewhere near the image. In 2022, the captions were in a different font and size within a yellow box that connected to the image. For 2023 to current, I chose to get rid of the box but keep the text the same. To replace the box, I add a yellow line that either extends on the edge or into the image to connect the caption with the image. This is better as the yellow box was a bit too distracting.