MAF News - the old magazine and prayer diary

One of the organisations Wycliffe Bible Translators works most closely with is MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). MAF provide planes and pilots to take people in and out of remote communities, transporting valuable supplies and ensuring that people can reach important medical facilities in times of emergency.

They share the news of what they do through their website and through a quarterly magazine and prayer bulletin.

Now, to be honest, their magazine hasn’t been doing their mission justice (see the top picture). The stories it told were fantastic, but the overall appearance was tired looking and cheap. Plus, there was no way to tell that the prayer booklet belonged to the same organisation as the magazine.

Compare this to the new publication (bottom picture), which looks and feels loads better. Why…

1 – The colour scheme runs through both publications. You can tell, without reading anything, that the magazine and prayer diary have come from the same organisation.

2 – The paper is heavier. It’s amazing how printing on heavier paper can make a real difference in the feeling of quality. OK, it pushes the costs up a bit, but it does convey a message about your organisation. Heavier paper people will associate with quality.

Flying for Life - MAF's new magazine and prayer diary

3 – Loads of white space. MAF have always shared really good photographs of what they do and they’ve never been scared of using half a page for a picture, but in the old publication any space not being used for an image was used for text. The new publication still has the great photography, but doesn’t have so much text, as a result it’s easier to read and is more inviting to the reader. There are still some great stories to read, but maybe in this case less really is more.

What I’d still want to change

The magazine and prayer diary look great, but I’d want to do more to strengthen the MAF brand. Their website could look more like the publications just by changing some of the colours to match what they are putting out in print.

That could be a quick win as changing colours doesn’t take an awful lot of technical know-how.

Of course, if there was money to spend I’d like to see the swoosh on the web too, but that can come later.

Now I’ll just be interested to see them at a future event to find out if this change has made it across all their literature and onto some of their display stands too.

For now I’ll just say, great job guys… keep up the good work and thanks for all the flying.