Dominican Convent School (DCS) is one of Flow’s longest-standing clients, and every year we get to marvel at this wonderful Johannesburg institution.
Specifically, when we put together the school’s annual magazine. It’s then that we get to see the highlights, triumphs and achievements of DCS and its pupils. We enjoy the art and creative writing (produced with open hearts, like only kids can), and we’re inspired by their earnestly articulated dreams and aspirations.
And 2013 has been no exception. The latest DCS magazine, hot off the presses, is filled with the kind of content that elicits both a smile, and a tear.
It’s also an important edition because it’s the last under current headmaster Mike Thiel, and high school head Marina Burger, who are both leaving the school. The magazine is dedicated to Marina, who has served DCS for the past 14 years.
The challenge for the DCS magazine team – DCS marketing and communications manager Renata Haywood, Flow project manager Roshni Nana, designer Nomthandazo Peyise and copy editor Willem Steenkamp – was to come up with a magazine that was up to the high standard of those of previous years.
Much of that challenge fell to Nomthandazo (or Noms, as we call her), who had to contend with the double whammy of being relatively new to Flow, and working on her first DCS magazine. But she quickly rose to it.
“The inspiration behind the year book was drawn from the school itself, looking at how they are as a school and how they function, their passion for learning and teaching but most of all, the community aspect.
“The design elements were based on the idea of a community, with a bit of a retro look and feel (such as the cover, and the letters ‘DCS’ that flow into each other). The use of circles is a representation of young adults who have come full circle though an awesome journey, hence the dotted lines that represent a path to discovering yourself, filled with memories that are priceless.
“There was a lot of use of white space, allowing the content to breathe a little, making it cleaner and slick,” says Noms of her design template.
Large, highly detailed publishing projects such as these can easily become difficult to co-ordinate but, says Roshni, this one went particularly smoothly.
“A lot of credit for this must go to Renata, for her enthusiasm and active participation in the project. Because we were able to work closely with her at all times, the magazine was done in record time – in fact, we delivered three days early – and with the absolute minimum of fuss,” she says.
Renata’s very pleased with the final result, too, saying the 2013 DCS magazine “looks absolutely lovely” with its “neat and clean and open” design.
And most importantly, Renata enjoyed working on the magazine as much as we did.
“What could have been a daunting task, was really fun,” she concludes.