design
When I joined AJC, I didn't anticipate it would be an art class as well as a writing class, but I was thrilled to find out just how much design would be asked of me during my time on staff. Plainly put, I adore design. I live in Adobe Creative Cloud and pour over every element. My advisor calls me the "InDesign guru," but I think I'm really just a teenager who grew up in art classes and came home from first grade with paint in her hair every other day.
Being editor-in-chief is a lot of things. Writing is the foundation of course, then there's team building and delegation, but the thing that takes up most of my time when putting together an issue of The Claw -- even more than reporting and writing -- is design. Very few of my peers in the EHS student body would even glance at the magazine if not for interesting visuals to balance out the hundreds of words in front of them.
I've discovered a love for teaching others how to design as well, and I'm fulfilled each time a staff member comes to me for suggestions on their spreads. I'm also proud to have spent a ton of time redesigning the magazine and news site. As soon as I was named EIC at the end of last school year, I started overhauling the design conventions of The Claw, and the web editor simultaneously renovated the Tiger Times Online with my oversight. When I look through an issue now, I'm proud to see my own color palettes, folios, fonts and design guidance represented on each page. I'm sure you'll notice my fondness for color as a connector -- a creator of continuity across spreads -- as well as my love for eye-catching fonts and illustrative, artistic elements.
The full PDF versions of the two magazine issues created so far during my term as editor-in-chief can be accessed here, as well as via the magazine tab on the front page of my portfolio.
creating first impressions
The cover of The Claw sets the tone for each issue we publish. And for every issue created while I've been on staff, I've had the privilege of designing the cover and setting that tone. Last school year, I volunteered to do it for the first issue, as I was writing the cover story and had more of an interest in design than anyone else on staff. The editor-in-chief then asked me to do it for the rest of the year.
Now I'm editor-in-chief, and I continue to design the covers because it's one of my favorite parts of putting together each issue. Design is the best way to hook people into a story and to communicate beyond words through images, illustrations, strokes and more. I'm proud to know my designs are the first thing people see each time I hand them a copy of the magazine.
Move through the slideshow to the right to see every cover I've designed in chronological order. Click on covers to see them in expanded view with additional insights into their creations.
so many Spreads
Stories' impacts are limited without eye-catching visuals to accompany them. Below is a selection of my favorite spreads I've designed to cradle and visually elaborate on the writing of myself and my fellow staff member, as well as to keep the attention of my teenage readership engaged. The spreads I've included below are characterized by their complexity. These are pages on which I took special care to make sure design elements were adding critical layers to their respective articles.
I apologize for compromised file quality in these slideshows. The PDFs linked here are much clearer.
Created under conventions of 2023-24 EIC Pera Onal
Created under conventions of 2023-24 EIC Pera Onal
unconventional conventions
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In renovating the Tiger Times Online and redesigning the publication conventions of The Claw, I've tried to infuse small creative details to give the publications more personality. The most noticeable way I've done this is probably through their flags.
The idea of a tiger's claw mark running through the publications' names had been on my mind as soon as the web editor and I started making changes. I'm not sure why I like it so much -- maybe because I think it embodies the competitive spirit of the EHS Tigers. Every time I open the website, I appreciate the character the clawed underline gives our front page. And every time I look at a cover of The Claw, I feel the mark characterizes EHS's energy with its simple boldness.
When approaching The Claw's folio this year, I wanted to try something different. We'd been having issues with media literacy among the student body -- things like students getting upset that our news was "biased," not realizing that the story they were upset about was in the opinion section. Looking back through old volumes of the magazine, I saw many variations on the element, but no version stood out enough to catch readers' attention or helped distinguish the sections of the publication clearly.
I made the folios bigger this year and turned to color to differentiate the sections. I created what look like stacks of circular cards, a different color "card" for each section. In that section of the magazine, that card is in front.
I then asked the staff to incorporate the designated color of their section's card into their design elements, so each section would have a cohesive appearance stemming from the folio. It was a way to better organize the designers around color themes. And as a result, it helped clear things up for readers as well. It was a great example of how one small design convention can hugely improve readability and organization in a print publication.
colorful contents
When it came to redesigning The Claw this year, one of my biggest tasks was overhauling the contents page. It was great before, but I saw many students skip over it when they opened the magazine. I wanted to make sure, especially for our profile-themed issue in the fall, that they were reading the editor's letter and seeing the table of contents to better understand the issue's broad scope and intentions. I also wanted to incorporate design elements that would provide a transition between the cover and the issue and carry readers deeper into the staff's work. I settled on an ombre background to create some visual flow. Additionally, the contents page is where the section colors are introduced. In fact, most of the design choices throughout the magazine find a color basis here.
before
after
all about art
There are many ways to tell a story, and art is sometimes necessary to fill gaps or add something special. I often find myself making art when it is impossible to obtain a photo for a story, and indeed, all of the art you see below was made simply because stories needed a visual element. The large image below accompanied an op-ed of mine about Gen Z's relationship with climate change. It depicts a person looking out on a rocky landscape, meant to embody my generation's marred future. The first smaller image below accompanied a review of podcasts, and the second accompanied my review of the mockumentary "Cunk on Life."
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