Hemisphere

The Port of Tyne is one of the principal trade gateways into the north of the UK, making it a key player in the economy of the North East region and therefore an organisation of significant importance to a wide range of different stakeholders.

The Port had traditionally produced two magazines, one for external stakeholders and one for staff members and their families, but both had become increasingly tired and ineffective over time. Hemisphere was tasked to overhaul both magazines in order to make them fresh, relevant and engaging for their very different target audiences.

We revisited the format of the publications to ensure we created a distinctive look and feel for each whilst still making them feel part of the same family. Because of the scale of operations at the Port, where everything seems larger than life, we based both publications around an oversized A4 format, allowing us to convey through the newly-commissioned photography a sense of the sheer size of everything from the massive logistics warehouses to the huge cranes used for offloading containers.

The external stakeholder publication, Current, was designed to have a Sunday-supplement feel about it, with in-depth features on the key areas of economic activity at the Port and insights into the sorts of businesses that both use the Port and also develop around it as part of the extended supply chain. The staff publication, Tyne Crier, was given a much more newspaper-like feel, with snappier, shorter articles, allowing people to dip in and out of the information more easily.

Graphically, both publications use large square fact boxes to summarise key snippets of information, a reference back to the existing Port of Tyne brand mark and also to the many 'boxes' of goods that pass through the Port every day.

Hemisphere's role has encompassed editorial development, photography commissioning, copywriting, design and production of both publications.