Community magazine design.

Challenge

Soha Housing is a successful, award-winning, community-based housing provider working in and around south Oxfordshire, running and managing around 6000 properties. Their quarterly resident’s magazine ‘Hometalk’ is an important communication channel that allows tenants to stay connected with their community and have their say in how things are run. The Community Magazine Design had to be engaging and attractive to not just capture attention but then keep the reader involved.

Approach

The Soha team scrutinised previous copies ‘Hometalk’, and feedback sought from a range of stakeholders, before asking Toast to create something new. The challenge was to make this essential communication piece capable of competing with a whole range of magazines that their residents read from Radio Times to Store Magazines and TV Soap weeklies. ‘Hometalk’ needed to compete and win against this range of publications to ensure residents picked it up, read and shared it.

Solution

Toast created a range of mood boards to ensure that the look and feel was correct before creating a number of sketch-based concepts. The strongest of these concepts was then developed further until the final design was created. The new look established a refreshing style for subsequent copies to follow, and Toast has now created 5 seasonal editions of “Hometalk and it’s been very well received.