Cleaver Magazine
This collection contains an overview of the work completed for Cleaver Magazine: Philadelphia’s International Literary Magazine. Jackson’s primary duties were/are as follows: Web design, logo and icon design, branding, typography, game design, video editing, social media, and search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, Cleaver Magazine was the focus of a full rebrand Jackson completed during Michigan State University’s Identity Design course (GD 466). All images used during this mock rebranding process are sourced from pexels.com. Visit Cleaver Magazine.
Icon
When Jackson first started working for Cleaver in May of 2023, he spent a large amount of time creating several different variations of both icons, and text-based logos. This portion of the internship involved the highest amount of revision. After 30 Icon iterations, 6 of these were refined, and presented. Jackson’s suggested icon of the six options was selected, refined further, and used in place of Cleaver Magazine’s previous icon. This icon is now used across the site as a favicon and as a profile picture for their various social media accounts.
Logo
After several iterations, the above redesigned logo was suggested as a replacement for the current logo.
Icon & Logo Process Work
Pictured above are some examples of the process work for both the Cleaver Magazine icon and logo.
Literary Thumbnail Images
For each literary piece published, Cleaver Magazine pairs the written work with a thumbnail image. This image appears directly before the written work, and is used to advertise the piece across social media. The above 4 thumbnail images were created by Jackson (matching the magazine’s aesthetic).
Rebranded Icons
In addition to this internship and freelance work, Cleaver Magazine was the focus of one of Jackson’s semester-long projects, centered around a full brand redesign. The icons presented above were examples of standardized buttons for use across Cleaver’s website and social media pages.
Example Social Media Posts
These example posts, modeled after the Twitter and Instagram formats, were yet another addition to this rebrand.
Bookmarks
In addition to digital work, a physical product was also developed for the sake of this rebrand. Pictured above are two versions (front and back) of proposed metallic bookmarks.
Writing Workshop Thumbnails
After working for Cleaver for some time, a full redesign of the site was requested. This began with a redesign of Cleaver’s selling point––their Writing Workshops page. The above thumbnail images were a new implementation as part of this redesign, advertising each of the individual upcoming classes and previous recordings.
YouTube Thumbnails
As Cleaver Magazine’s video editor, Jackson is also responsible for the creation of various YouTube thumbnails. These thumbnails can be seen publicly here.