In the summer of 2014, I was working as an intern in the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) design department, and I was asked to create some concepts for reformatting the Docent Notes newsletter. To my surprise, and delight, what I thought would be a one-off project turned into an amazing 9-year experience, designing the first 54 issues of the magazine.

 

Essentially, TMA gave me a brand guide and a blank slate to take the publication from a humble email newsletter to a print- and digital-ready magazine. It's interesting to look back on older issues and see how much I grew as a designer from year to year. I even got to completely rebrand my own work, debuting a new Docent Notes logo and a much more energetic and modern art direction in January 2021.

 

Docent Notes was a steady presence in my life through so many changes: graduating from undergrad, moving to the west coast, the dark days of retail and freelance, getting my master's degree, starting my first full-time design job, and the COVID-19 pandemic. I worked on the magazine from eight different addresses, three different states, and a couple airports in between. Countless life changes, big and small, were chronicled over emails with editors and collaborators with whom I grew very close.

 

July 2023 saw my last issue on board as graphic designer. It’s been several years since then, but it’s difficult to articulate how much of a joy it was to work with editors and museum staff, and how privileged I feel to have been a part of Docent Notes for so many years.

 

Here are just a few of my favorite pages and spreads from issues past.