AAR’s newsletter scores in Ragan competition

With brighter content and avant-garde design, aerospace company’s publication earns two awards

The creators behind AAR Corp.’s newsletter wanted to make a product that everybody’s mother could read.

And that’s quite a feat—considering the company specializes in products and services for the aerospace and defense industries. But with a two-person effort, the company earned Ragan honors for best employee newsletter and most improved newsletter.

Susan Hughes and Carol Wood, the director and the manager of organizational development, respectively, were in charge of the project. The company’s quarterly newsletter, The Right Stuff, is read by 6,000 employees.

Before the redesign, the two described the newsletters as dull. Only two colors were used, graphics were sparse, and the content was laden with jargon.

The new publication doesn’t look anything like the old one.

For starters, it was reshaped—literally. To stay fresh, each quarterly issue appears in a different shape or size. One example: a triangle. Graphics, pictures, and text pop in every issue.

“We didn’t want something that would end up in a pile,” Hughes says. “We wanted to make it noticeable.”