Skelton Sprouls was selected as Weill Cornell Medicine’s publisher, to manage, design, write, and produce a newly imagined bi-annual magazine for the preeminent New York City-based biomedical research unit and medical school of Cornell University. Designed to showcase groundbreaking stories in academic medicine, the magazine is filled with conceptual artwork, data graphics, and images of compassionate care. Our team also created a companion website that echoes the print edition in a fully responsive digital experience.
Cover Design
Renaming the magazine to Impact represents an editorially driven approach that aligns with the impact-first stories being told. The full name, Weill Cornell Medicine Magazine, is used as a secondary element to the nameplate, anchoring the cover lines along the bottom. Custom artwork is cropped at the top and bottom to create dynamic clear space and wraps to the back cover.
Reimagined Magazine Architecture
With editorial consultant Sue DePasquale on our team, we fully reimagined the structure of the magazine, establishing four key priorities for the redesign:
▪ Create a design structure that is sparer and cleaner to the reader’s eye.
▪ Simplify the navigational structure and more clearly define for readers the purpose of departments.
▪ Rely more heavily on conceptual illustration for visual solutions. This supports an impact-first editorial approach, prioritizing the visualization of ideas over literal depictions of people.
▪ Institute more effective visual pacing, using the “sandwich” principle — with departments serving as the “bread,” surrounding the “meat” of highly visual feature stories. To emphasize this approach, we mixed paper stocks to distinguish the three main sections of the magazine. The features are printed on gloss-coated paper while the front and back sections are on uncoated paper.
“The magazine looks gorgeous! Huge thanks to the entire Skelton Sprouls team for your design and editorial vision, your patience, meticulousness and good humor every step of the way. It is quite something to see this dynamic and lively piece, which I’m sure will make the impact (pun inevitable) we hope on our campus and among our stakeholders.”
— Jordan Lite, Managing Editor
Second Opinion: opens the front section of the magazine by posing a question on a compelling issue in academic medicine, with responses from Weill Cornell Medicine experts who are thought leaders on the subject. This first issue tackles questions on health equity.
Notable: “news from around campus and beyond” captures news of institutional import. Recurring columns in this section include 3 Questions, a brief Q&A with a faculty or staff member on the importance of a new program or initiative; Overheard, highlighting faculty and other experts who have been quoted in major news outlets on important health issues; and Dateline, providing a timely update on one of Weill Cornell Medicine’s global health initiatives.
Grand Rounds: “teaching, learning and patient-centered care” highlights patient care advances, clinical breakthroughs, and medical education with human-interest stories that capture Weill Cornell Medicine’s pioneering efforts to change medicine and transform patients’ lives.
Discovery: “innovation at the bench and by the bedside” captures basic, clinical, and translational research advances. Conceptual artwork is commissioned throughout the section, to illustrate two breakthrough research stories as well as multiple research findings.
Exchange: created as a 2-page standing department, this takes the form of a guided conversation between a featured Weill Cornell Medicine pair. For this first issue, two women leaders at Weill Cornell Medicine discuss the power of mentorship.
Many great clinicians and researchers find inspiration from the arts and literature. A recurring department, Muse: “finding inspiration from outside medicine,” highlights a faculty member’s or student’s source of inspiration outside their field. Muse closes out the front section of the magazine, and with a shift from uncoated to gloss coated paper, the feature contents begin on the righthand page.
“The incredible Weill Cornell Medicine students, faculty, staff and alumni are leading the way in each part of our mission to care, discover and teach. Each of the stories featured in the magazine highlights [their] collaborative spirit, commitment and dedication.”
— Augustine M.K. Choi, M.D., Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean, Weill Cornell Medicine Provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University
Features: each issue includes two long-form stories on Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) breakthroughs. In this first issue’s cover story, The Search for a Cure, WCM scientists aim to liberate those living with HIV by subduing the virus for good. In a second feature, New Frame of Mind, a WCM psychiatrist and neuroscientist and his team are poised to upend the way mental health disorders are diagnosed and treated.
Unpacking the Power of Data: a highly graphic three-page fold-out spread, this recurring feature uses data to distill complex scientific processes into steps that translate how science and medicine are continually improving patient care. This issue’s story, Evasive Action, visualizes the evolutionary process of mutating cells, groundbreaking research that could hold the key to vanquishing cancer.
Alumni: Moments, Alumni Notes, Profiles, and In Memoriam, the back section returns to uncoated paper, depicting important milestones in student life through photos, and including multiple alumni profiles among class notes and obituaries. Spotlight: an interview with an alum who is an expert on a topic of current interest in the health care world closes out the magazine.
Website: Skelton Sprouls brought Fastspot, a Baltimore web agency, onto our team to design and build the Impact magazine website. Built in Drupal to seamlessly integrate with Weill Cornell Medicine’s platform, the site compliments the design and structure of the print magazine but with added dynamic capabilities, such as a pannable data visualization feature and interactive table of contents.