The first step was researching historical and current farmer’s almanac publications. Almanacs have been popular for hundreds of years in the United States and have mass appeal as a source of reference and entertainment. However, pain points for today’s progressive, urban audience include lack of cultural inclusivity, text-heavy content, crowded layout, and lack of practical appeal for readers who live in small spaces.

To help understand and empathize with the magazine’s audience, I developed four reader personas, each embodying different motivations, interests, and viewpoints of Abundance’s desired customer base of urban and suburban homesteading enthusiasts.

The initial mood board had a maximalist, whimsical, folk-art inspired character with dense illustration and text. Although the photography in this mood board was successful, the illustration and layout styles did not produce spreads that were a match for the audience and content, so this mood board was replaced shortly after layout work began.

After realizing that the initial mood board was not working, I updated the vision for illustration and layout in this reworked mood board. The magazine’s new direction has a more lively, urban feel while keeping its commitment to a hand-touched and nature-centered aesthetic. During this stage, I also chose typography and set the initial direction for the color palette.

Once content was selected, I created the initial flatplan, then began the process of laying out each spread. During the process, changes occurred to improve the visual experience, to create a better flow of information from article to article, to add pages as a resource for the do-it-at-home craft, and to make room for additional advertisers.