My specific role as Editor-in-Chief was to choose the visual elements we as a staff wanted to showcase throughout the book to drive consistency and proper coverage of our theme. Our theme was “Look Closely, the Feeling Will Come, and You’ll Know It.” We wanted to do a completely different book as far as graphic design than what was expected of a typical Brighton book in the past.
While selecting fonts, I wanted to choose one (Emmylou Signature) that was simplistic yet elegant to match the soft feeling theme of our yearbook. The second font (Avalon) had a variety of weights that complemented the Emmylou Signature font in its bold or light weights. With these fonts, I highlighted specific names, titles, or words within main copies, headlines, and modular stories using different font weights and colors as reader entry points. I found that by changing the color, capitalization and weights of the font, the words became emphasized. This created a strong feeling, while still being easy to read.
I included a pull-out quote that was partially placed on top of every dominant photo. After viewing the photo, I wanted the reader to be drawn into the quote so they would experience “the feeling” that was being evoked on the spread. The quote stood out because it was in all capital letters with a five point leading and a 170 kerning positive value while pulling color from the page. I learned I was able to draw attention and introduce feelings in a subtle way capturing the subject's voice and perspective on the event or moment.
I chose to put a blue bar (or red in our mini-mag) to draw attention to a person who was being quoted or highlighted in a photo or story. I partially cut-out the subject and placed them on top of the bar for a visual effect. Along with the blue bar, I used a gray box (or a gold box in our mini-mag) and a one point black line to highlight physical photos, modular stories, and quotes to place important emphasis on what was being covered through specific spreads.
A trend I saw in a lot of magazines that I was pulling inspiration from, one specific photo was in black and white. I chose this element on one photo of each spread to draw a certain emphasis of importance. On theme spreads, I chose the dominant photo to make a connection to that section’s feeling that complemented the typography and the written words. On other spreads, I chose a photo in a modular story or an all-coverage device to highlight a specific individual and their unique story. I found that doing this throughout the book overall maintained the overall simplistic balance of beauty and pride of our theme.
Another trend I noticed by some graphic designers was overlapping photos, cutting text into photos, and subjects partially cut out. I included these trends on specific spreads to add additional levels of white space between elements and to draw specific attention to words or headlines. I found that this allowed me to design with more white space making it more appealing to readers and connecting each element as a unified package.
As I designed the folio on each spread, I used different font weights to emphasize the section of the book (all capitals), the spread spin off (all lowercase), and spread topics (with the dominant feature in all capitals and all modulars in lowercase). I also added thematic colors and the use of the blue bar and gray box with gold lines to draw attention to specific words and phrases. I realized that even the smallest detail as a folio needs to be designed thoughtfully and connect to the spread and thematic elements of the book.
By encompassing all of these elements throughout the yearbook, our theme was reinforced on each page, pages became more pleasing to the eye, and the book became more uniform and flowed together better due to consistent elements on every page.
*Note: The following spreads will show the design choices I made in the book. Click on the spread photo or caption title link to view the image in a browser for zooming capabilities.