the life times

Concept, art direction, and design of The Life Times, a 12-page quarterly publication for Lifetime Home Remodeling's 500+ employees across Denver, Phoenix, and Southern California.

Minimalist coffee can design in hand – black and white packaging with bold typography

project type:

Editorial Design

year

year:

2025

my role

my role:

Creative lead

client

client:

Lifetime

Project Credits

Project Credits:

Editor in Chief: Adam Helm · Copy: J.C. Gage · Graphic Designer: Noelle Betkowski

setup

Lifetime Home Remodeling had grown to over 500 employees across Denver, Phoenix, and Southern California. Leadership wanted a quarterly publication that would actually circulate — something employees would read and keep, not glance at and toss in a drawer.

The design problem was finding the right place to land between two opposing references. On one side, the Lifetime brand — a home remodeling company that has to feel trustworthy. On the other, more of a cultural newspaper — expressive, illustrated, arts-district energy.

insight

The publication needed two qualities at once. Professional enough that leadership pages like "The First Word with Brian" and "P.S. with Peter Svedin" felt at home. Expressive enough that the average employee would pick it up because it didn't look like an HR document or a Mailchimp email.

The Life Times sits on Lifetime's brand vocabulary — Feature Display, Beatrice, the navy and warm orange palette, certificate-style borders lifted from existing brand collateral. On top of that foundation, we layered the expressive: large page numbers, textures, hand-drawn notes, playful typography. The brand is the foundation. The expressive layer is what makes it feel like a publication you'd want to read.

setup

insight

Execution

Each issue runs twelve pages, printed quarterly at 500 — one per employee.

Recurring sections — The Break Room, The Blue Pages, That's So Peter — were built around content submitted by employees across all three markets. A custom embroidered cap was designed as a giveaway, available only by reading the issue and finding a hidden word-count puzzle.

"Better than what I saw at a multi-billion dollar company."

Outcome

Issue one shipped to all three markets and was distributed at the company All-Hands. The Life Times became Lifetime's recurring internal quarterly, and the wordmark, page system, and section architecture set the template subsequent issues have followed.

The response said more than any metric could. Brian, Lifetime's CEO, called the quality better than internal publications he'd seen at a multi-billion dollar company. Employees wrote in unprompted — 'I already can't wait to read the next one.' 'I miss reading the paper.'

The challenge on most projects with a brand system this defined is restraint, knowing what not to do. The challenge here was the opposite.