NAFI’s Mentor Magazine Advances Excellence in Flight Instruction | Education
8/27/2025
RRD supports NAFI’s rebrand with expert print execution, proprietary Digimag® digital editions
CHALLENGE
The National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) is an esteemed non-profit organization committed to maintaining and raising the professional standing of flight instructors. Founded in 1967, NAFI is dedicated to creating safer pilots through flight instructor education, mentorship, and advocacy. For over 55 years, NAFI has supported flight educators by providing valuable resources, tools, and programs that empower instructors to deliver exceptional training to their students. This commitment to aviation safety benefits airline and private passengers every time they board a flight.
NAFI engages members — and attracts new ones — through its bi-monthly publication, Mentor magazine. This high-quality magazine is distributed to the organization’s roughly 8,500 members and serves as a key marketing tool. Since its inception in the 1990s, Mentor has continually evolved to meet the needs of NAFI and its membership — and in 2024, that meant going digital. However, since NAFI is a lean nonprofit striving for success, there were concerns about the cost and effort involved in creating and distributing a best-in-class digital edition of the magazine optimized for all devices.
A year later, in 2025, a new NAFI logo was designed as part of a wider rebrand. The new logo was a gradient design. Due to its subtle color transitions, the NAFI team desired confirmation that it would reproduce well on paper. Given Mentor magazine’s role in brand awareness and member engagement, it was crucial that the logo popped on the magazine’s cover. “We wanted to make sure it looked as good as possible,” says NAFI Director of Publications and Editor Beth Stanton.
SOLUTION
NAFI enjoys a long-standing and fruitful partnership with RRD, which has printed Mentor magazine for many years. When called upon to help address NAFI’s two-fold challenge of digitizing Mentor and ensuring the quality of its print refresh, RRD’s capabilities and expertise in both fields proved invaluable.
For Mentor’s digital edition, RRD took on the responsibility of assembling, formatting, and uploading digital issues with their proprietary Digimag® solution, which transforms print materials into dynamic digital publications. An easy-to-use, shareable publication link meant NAFI could email the new digital edition of Mentor to members with just a few clicks. Onboarding was also efficient: an RRD expert walked Stanton through the process, explaining how it worked in a manner she says went “above and beyond.” Additionally, RRD’s competitive rates kept the cost of producing the digital edition within NAFI’s budget.
Even with the successful Digimag launch, Mentor’s legacy print product remained a priority. “We take boxes and boxes to major aviation industry events,” says NAFI Program Development Manager Sarah Staudt. “People who aren’t NAFI members are able to feel our influence. Pilots have a practice of leaving magazines behind at airports, and others can pick up our magazine and be impacted by NAFI. Because of this exposure, it’s important for the magazine to look and feel professional,” said Staudt.
Understanding the importance of Mentor not only to NAFI, but within the aviation industry as a whole, RRD was committed to making the new logo look perfect in print. To address the color quality concerns for the new logo, RRD’s lead print operator completed a sample print run to ensure that the color reproduced correctly. Though the print team felt satisfied that the logo looked as it should, RRD still sent the sample pages to NAFI for review and peace of mind. “I was just so grateful that RRD was willing to go that extra mile,” says Stanton.
RESULTS
In the end, RRD helped launch Mentor’s digital edition and executed the logo refresh in a way that made NAFI feel confident in its larger goal of expanding the organization’s reach. “Mentor magazine is the cornerstone of our communication with NAFI members,” says Stanton. “We could not create this high-quality publication without RRD.”
Outcomes of RRD’s ongoing partnership with NAFI include:
- Mentor magazine now publishes seamlessly in both print and digital formats using RRD’s Digimag platform.
- RRD ensured the new logo translated effectively to print, preserving brand consistency across all channels.
- The combined print and digital editions support member engagement, recruitment, and brand reach.
- RRD efficiently and cost-effectively deployed an expanded offering via the Mentor digital edition, helping NAFI meet both outreach and budget goals.