MKE Creatives: March 2015: Kathryn Lavey on art-directing

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The MKE Creatives meetup of March was very well-attended and I’m sure that our guest, Kathryn Lavey, was a big part of the reason why. Kathryn is the art director at Milwaukee Magazine and did a great job sharing with all of us what life is like at Milmag for her!

Kathryn has been at Milwaukee Magazine, in a number of roles, for seven-and-half years, and has been the art director for three-and-a-half years of that time. When she was in college, she started out as a nursing major, but quickly switched to graphic design.

While she has a lot of responsibilities, overseeing the cover-design is one of her more favorite tasks. She and her team give a lot of time and thought to each cover. Some recent favorite covers were on the “Best Burgers of MKE“, “Reasons to Love MKE“, and “Fall Arts Guide” issues. (she pointed out that for the Fall Arts Guide, they actually built the marquee that was featured). Everyone on the design/editorial team contributes at pitch meetings for each issue, and then editorial decides what will be pursued. Kathryn said that her work gets a reasonable divide between being an administrator and designer – maybe 60/40. She also mentioned, much to my pleasure, that Milmag tries to do as little photo-retouching as possible.

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We had a lot of attendees, representing a lot of different kinds of creativity, this month! They were voice actors, writers, creative consultants, graphic designers, actors, photographers, and sales/marketing consultants. Paul Akert, Michelle Orcwarszki, Rosie Hartmann, Liz Lincoln, David Bernacchi, Lisa England, Jeff Ganger, Mark Bradford, Rob Gustafson, Justin Lee, Paul Henning, Johnny M, Jennifer Janviere, Mike Lagerman, and Deborah Mamon were all there at Anodyne Coffee!

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Here’s all the info you need about future meetups!

And here’s all the past MKE Creatives meetup write-ups! 🙂