Design

Before I became an EiC, I specialized in designing spreads. Although I also got content and photos for my spreads, I was one of the design managing editors for Volume 63 and was always in the designer position in a team.

Here are some spreads my team made during my first year (volume 62) on Regulus (I was a designer in this team).

Here are some spreads I designed as a team leader and a managing design editor my second year (volume 63) on Regulus.

I hope you can see the difference in my designs. The spreads that I designed during my first year were plain and blank. They didn't have much content on the spreads even though there was so much space left. The spreads from volume 63 get much better, although looking back at it, there are spreads that I would change some designs on. But overall, each spread has much more content and you can clearly see the design element that is being carried through for this volume (the black and white cutout with a colored shadow).

Here are some spreads that I helped design as an EiC for volume 64. My main job as an EiC was not to create spreads but to help teams create them, view the proofed spreads, and change them if necessary.

Design was one of the things that the staff for Volume 64 struggled with. About half of our staff was new, and most of our veteran staff were in positions of content and photography. The spreads that were proofed didn't look aesthetically pleasing and/or didn't follow our theme and style guide. So, this is where I stepped in and helped design some spreads or modules.

Templates

To help and guide our staff, the EiCs made module templates on Walsworth.

This not only helps our staff create the page but also helps to give consistency throughout our pages. Since different teams are making different spreads and design is one of those things where a person's creativity shows, it is very easy to end up with spreads that follow the same style guide but completely different aesthetics. The module will still allow some degree of creativity to flourish while also keeping the spreads on the same level of creativity.

These are actual modules that our staff made using our templates:

Here are two other templates I made for volume 64:

While we wanted the juniors (people who are going to lead Regulus in 25-26) to play a big part in creating the sports and club photo spreads, I knew that I had to provide them with a basic structure so that they could comfortably start creating the pages.

So, I made templates for both sports and club photo pages. I made them so that all they have to do is title each sport/club, drag in photos, and caption them.

Folio

For those of you who don't know what a folio is, it is the page numbers of the book, often appearing in the bottom corner of each page.

Although folios don't seem to need a special design since their purpose is to show the page number of each page, you could add a design to the folio to connect the spreads to the theme, further enhancing the cohesiveness of the entire book.

For Volume 64, we wanted the folio to be simple and something that didn't necessarily stand out but still had a design that connected to the theme. The design elements we are carrying through Volume 64 include circles and arrows. Therefore, we decided to incorporate them into our folio.

To use a circle in the folio was a bit too much, and it was hard to make it simple, so I decided to ditch the circle and only used the arrow. I made five different versions of the folio, each with the colors of our color palette, the page number, and the title of the spread.

The tiny arrow design we ended up with is simple yet successfully connected to our theme and design elements.

Cover

For Volume 64, we designed the cover ourselves for the first time in Regulus history (64 years!!!).

Here is a quick run-down of the process:

The left screenshot was our original idea. The cover is typically used to introduce the book's theme and some design elements, including the color palette and the font.

Since our theme is "Every Second Counts," highlighting students' lives in and out of school, we put pictures showing various student lives (ex., the crowd at a soccer game, getting help from a teacher during a free block, etc.)

The clock is also there to introduce the time element of our design (how we focus on time and how our book is structured as a day, with each section of the book set at a certain time).

The title, "Every Second Counts," introduces our heading/subheading font, Hello Monday, and the color filters put on each photo introduce the color palette.

Here are some things I struggled with/needed to change when designing this cover:

Giving diversity within the photos

The photos needed diversity in terms of race and gender. The seven photos used in the left screenshot are dominant with white boys.

Creating the shape of each picture on Walsworth

I used the drawing tool to create each shape of the picture which seems simple. But in reality, matching up the shape with the one next to it and trying to make the size of each picture box similar was harder than expected.

The clock design

Designing the clock was probably the most simple task on the cover. I just had to make a circle and two arrows. The hard part was deciding how many parts of the clock we were showing on the cover since the other half of the clock was shown on the back so that they connected when opened up.

The colored filters

The filters, depending on the photo and the color, made some of the photos look washed out or made the students in the photos look sick.

The screenshot to the right is the first draft we submitted.

The overall design is similar to the first draft shown above, but there are some clear differences we made.

Diversity

With the addition of the back cover design (the left side), we were able to find/put more photos that give more diversity.

The clock design

We decided to add the tick marks on the clock (the clock without the tick marks felt too plain and simple). The tick marks of 2 and 5 are longer than the other ones since this is the book for the class of 2025.

The colored filters

The filters are still used on each photo but instead of simply layering the photo with semi-transparent colored blocks (like how it was in the screenshot above), we decided to make the photos themselves the colors of the color palette using Canva.com.

We are in the process of finalizing our cover design. Right before December break, Walsworth representative Debbie Cohen and we EiCs met and discussed the cover design we had designed. After telling her our thought process as to why the cover is designed that way and hearing her opinion, we decided to let the professional designers from Walsworth help us and finalize our design.

Although we don't have the final version of the cover yet, here are a couple of things we decided to change of our cover:

Use three colors (blue, pink, and green) and no red or yellow to make the cover less busy and more soothing to the eye.
Add numbers to the clock to emphasize the clock design.
Emboss the title "Every Second Counts" and the hands of the clock/numbers on the clock, meaning the words/shapes are carved into the cover, making a dent in the shape of the words/shapes.
Put black hot foil on the clock design (the hands and the numbers). (Black hot foil makes it shiny instead of matte.)

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