Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

"I can write about anything!"™

 

 

 

Client: Mosaic Community Services, Inc.

Assignment: Create a twice-a-year, 2-color newsletter for Maryland's largest agency serving people with mental-health issues.

The board chairperson of Maryland's largest agency serving people with mental-health issues attended one of my newsletter seminars for theMaryland Organization of Nonprofit Organizations, and asked me to create a newsletter for her organization. Her agency had merged with another, and needed to establish itself in the eyes of the public. She and the staff thought a newsletter would be the ideal way to do so.

This first issue includes an innovative twist on the standard "letter from the executive director" - instead of the usual cheerleading piece, I combined news of the organization's recent merger and expanded scope of service with background about the exec. The news aspect made it appropriate to put the article on page 1; in future issues, letters from the exec probably will go on an inside page. An interview with a program director became a profile of his program. One of the most fulfilling pieces of the project was interviewing and writing up a successful client of the organization. Profiling the board chairperson was a real test of editing ability; I started with enough interesting information and good quotes to fill eight pages just about her!

Creating a graphic look for the new newsletter was relatively easy - I used the colors of the new logo, blue and dark yellow. Yellow is a tricky color for a publication; it can be hard to read if too light a hue, but makes a bright highlight element in darker shades. I chose a three-column format as the most readable and flexible layout, and combined the classic font styles of serif type for body text and sans-serif for headlines.

The client is delighted with the newsletter, recipients have been very complimentary, and I'm pleased to be part of an organization doing much-needed work in an important section of the health-care arena.

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