Design
My Journey with Design:
Ever since I was little I've always liked design, whether that be making the poster for a group project, or even just pointing out design elements I like or dislike in my every-day surroundings. Going into journalism I knew from the start that I wanted to work with design, and thus, became an editor for the Highlander, our newsmagazine. Being an editor, I work with my writers to make their visions come to life. As I've become more comfortable with inDesign I've started experimenting with new layouts, and am able to give more support to my writers.
For the following designs I focused a lot on spot color. All three spreads are predominantly writing so I used spot color to draw interest. I also matched the color scheme of their art to the elements I added including the pull quotes and the text boxes on the fish drawing. I also focused on making all of the infographics on the pages readable by changing the font size and text box area.
For the article "Scots break new waves," it started as a two page spread with a photo on the bottom half of each page. However, the photos were not high enough quality to show up well on print, so I deleted them and made the text fit onto one page. Then I added a pull quote to add a little bit more color and break up the text.
Top left: This spread started with text on both sides and an infographic. I improved it by shortening the text and adding photos for visual appeal. I also added a pull quote to break up the text.
Bottom left: When I was given the art for this spread it was a shock because the maestro didn't have the art as an oval. Despite this I was able to work around it and added more circles to make the spread more cohesive. I also used spot color for this spread to make the bottom left circles pop with the same color scheme as the art.
Right: The writer's idea for this spread involved having a vertical timeline on the right page. After talking it over with the writer we decided that the better option for her idea would be to have it horizontal across the bottom of the page. I then created art to go with her writing, and edited the blurbs to fit the text boxes.
Top right: As for this spread, I didn't do as much to improve it. I added a folio and helped the writer with her design idea to make sure it had one central theme.
Bottom right: This design changed a lot from the original maestro o the final product. I wasn't as involved in this design save for the spot color and the sizing of a few elements to fill the page.
Left: This spread was difficult to put together because during the maestro an infographic was planned for the right side of the right page, however, there was not a lot of information on this topic. We fixed this problem by coming up with the idea to make a big portion of the infographic an illustration. I also worked on the text wrap for the chromosomes to make the text fit the page while not breaking it.
This spread went through a few different drafts. The first of which, the quizz questions went down the entirety of the right page. From there, we decided that it would look better if there were pictures of each dog you could 'get.' The next version of the spread had low quality cut-out photos of dogs that wouldn't print well and weren't very cohesive. I then got new pictures and inserted and sourced them.
I was not the initial editor for this spread so it was very difficult to pick up after the other editor without the maestro process. The word count of the article was too much for a one page spread, but didn't take up a lot of room on the second page. After going through multiple failed ideas, I came up with the idea of an art element that would connect to the title of the article, and then completed the art needed.