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Introduction
If you catch me in class, I am most likely on Walsworth designing, but to my teachers: no I'm not. :)
Designing for the yearbook has become an enjoyment for me as I learn new yearbook-related techniques. Yet, it also plays a huge role in my skills as a digital designer. As someone who greatly enjoys working in digital media, designing has become a beneficial creative outlet for me. I am grateful to have been given the positions of Managing Editor of Design last year, and Editor in Chief of Design this year, and I take my roles as a designer very seriously.
Spreads I Made
Throughout the past years of being on Regulus, and regardless of my position, I was always the one to take control when designing. I challenged myself with different colors and style choices I wouldn't necessarily reach for. I was introduced to many techniques that I could use to improve my design. As an editor, I unfortunately am not able to design my own spreads from start to finish, instead, I provide and assist other members of the club with insightful design feedback. The spreads listed below are pages that I worked on individually when I was a team leader last year.
Music: In this spread, I was heavily inspired by Spotify Wrapped. I used phrases like "Our Top Artists" and "Our Top Genres", and tried to mimic the graphic that Spotify Wrapped provides. I used modules to keep the viewer engaged and to keep all content organized. My favorite addition to this spread was the Spotify barcodes because they add an interactive touch. I also practiced wrapping text around objects which was a time-consuming task, but became a great learning experience for me as a designer.
Swim and Dive: Creating this spread was very fun for me as it allowed me to look into the idea of cohesive objects and colors. Adding multiple quotes helps maintain engagement and easy-to-read topics. I also enjoyed the look of transparent text boxes over images giving it an almost "water" effect, which ties into the concept of Swim & Dive.
Art Classes: I experimented a lot with this spread, using a split "side-by-side" paragraph format, with a large letter to start, almost giving it a newspaper feel. I used overlapping images and modules to introduce interview segments. I managed to incorporate various images and artwork pieces that students created to give them a feel of participation and inclusiveness. Also, I found that using a dominant photo in the center fold provides an amusing and eye-catching addition to the spread.
Volleyball: This was the first spread I was assigned to as my role of a team leader and despite this being my first, it is still one of my favorites. I loved the concept of utilizing cut-outs and creative subheadings. I was very proud of my catchy headline: "You Just Got Served". One thing that stands out to me the most is the cohesiveness of the colors and the usage of images, which ties the whole spread together.
Science: Bolding names, important terms, and class names brought emphasis to the page and allowed the reader to understand the focus of the writing. With a clean and cohesive color palette and a centered photo, this spread became very visually pleasing and easy to follow.
Newtones & CandyCorn: One of my favorite techniques on Walsworth is overlaying text with images, it creates the effect as if the photo is going over the image. It always looks so sleek and cool, and it is so easy to do. For this spread, I used this strategy on the two dominant photos. I also used cut outs to match interview segements, and lines to create subheading sections.
Theme and Design
We wanted to include our editorial staff in our process of choosing a theme, therefore we created slideshows covering some of our color palette ideas and theme-related spreads. This was an excellent way to spark conversation and take note of any ideas that our staff provided to us.
Our theme is "EVERY SECOND COUNTS" -- meaning we wanted to highlight how much students at South do and how everyone spends their time differently because every second counts.
To carry out the concept of time, we wanted to resemble a clock/cycle effect. So we incorporated circles, lines, and arrows in our design layouts. Below are example spreads that our team worked on.
Module Resources
This is by far my favorite thing that the editors and I included this year. On Walsworth, we can create templates for staff to use, therefore we thought of the idea of making the design process a little bit easier by creating module templates. These are incredibly important because they help include cohesiveness throughout the book. They also make the design process fairly simple because they basically “design it for you”. You just drag and drop and then fill it in with the content/photo you have! That easy! They also are a huge help to give cohesion to the book by using circles and arrows in creative and uniform ways.
Design Trainings
As a Design Editor, I lead the design team of three Design Managing Editors (MEs). In this role, I give them tasks whenever we are conducting trainings. At the beginning of the year, I asked the Design MEs to create an activity for the training, and I would create the slideshow and an additional activity. They presented their idea to me and it was a huge success and was an excellent learning process for the Regulus staff.
Last Year: As a Design Managing Editor
Last year, as a Junior Managing Editor in Design I worked on club photo pages. Another Junior ME and I laid out the pages to show every club and its caption. We also had some leftover space so we filled it in with a module covering unique things that the clubs at our school do!
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