Print Design
I opened my first inDesign doc as a senior. By the end of the year, I had created and edited hundreds of them. Print design was a learning process for me but one that I used every ounce of energy on to help create beautiful spreads for our newspaper.
This spread went through many iterations before its final form.
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Because the left side is the inside cover, I wanted to include a table of contents for the issue while also creating QR codes to some of our online content that wasn't in the print paper.
​We also included a brief story and Q&A with a staff member who would be important for students to know in the new school year.
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​The right side of the spread served as an introduction to the next few spreads of the paper, which was a comprehensive analysis of the brand-new remodeled LHS school building.
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We decided on using the dominant photo of a prominent new space and to align the heading with the lights on the ceiling. The bottom of the page featured a breakdown of the section of the paper as well as QR codes to online coverage.
I thought the use of pastel colors in this spread highlighted the graphic and tied the color scheme into the whole story.
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​The lines cutting across the story as well as the music notes from the graphic fading into the text helped draw readers’ eyes to the story and avoid a chunky, blocky page.
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​Our full newspaper used plus columns like the one shown here to give space for QR codes, pull quotes and sidebars, and give readers multiple visual entry points into a spread.
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This spread went through many iterations before its final form.
The last spread of the newspaper is always a challenge between including all of the necessary information and still creating something that offers readers value and visual interest.
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​On this page, I tried to allow for the most information without being overwhelming.
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​Saving space with the use of QR codes and a compact staff list allowed for good editorial content without being visually boring or overwhelming.
On this spread, one of the major challenges was photo availability. The story had been a very quick, two-day event that was covered by myself and a co-editor on deadline. Photographing what amounted to criminal acts and their impact proved challenging.
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​But because of the impact of the events, we wanted to have our coverage of it be part of our print paper that came out later.
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​We had to edit the story a bit for relevance and used a side bar and QR code to link to an update so our content stayed up to date by the time print publication came around.
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​We also only had a few photos from the period and had to be very careful with which ones we used.
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​We choose the dominant one because of its color and imagery with the barred area locking items and used the secondary image as a smaller choice because it showed off one of the impacts of the event and major points of the story.
This story was long enough we decided to have it carry over to the next spread and run next to our coverage of the Unified Bowling team.
We used photos we felt had the best storytelling elements in showing emotion as well as other visual elements from the protest, like signs. We also wanted to have photos that highlighted the mass of students at the sit-in.
Our original planning for the print paper included other sports coverage for these pages, but after the gymnastics team was put up to be cut and the school rallied around it with a 300-person sit-in, we quickly scrambled to get this story in the print paper.
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The page needed to merge three elements: the story, the photos and other coverage we got from the event, which we linked with multiple QR codes.
This was the cover story for our third issue of the newspaper, focusing on how partisan politics have invaded high school spaces.
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I worked with one of our designers on this graphic, we wanted something bold and eye catching and I thought the stark imagery and bright colors accomplished just that.
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The next step was creating some other visual elements to break up the long text of the story. This included a pull quote on page two and a sidebar linking to past web coverage on the first page.
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The final step was implementing our red and blue colors into the whole page, including the alternating color pattern on the headline.
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All of these elements combined to create a page destined to draw readers eyes to what we had decided was a crucial issue for our student body.
On the Winter Court spread I knew I had a lot to fit onto one page.
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I worked to have the photos all fit in nicely to best encapsulate the experience of Winter Court from a wide array of perspectives.
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Partnering that with the short story and introduction of Winter Court candidates, as well as theming the page for winter, allowed a cohesive and engaging spread.
On this spread we wanted to give readers a couple different ways to catch up on the boys basketball season.
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The first was through the story that described the event of the season. We made sure the action of the image faced in towards the headline and subhead to draw readers eyes into the story.
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I also wanted to make sure I had other points of entry into the spread so I created a timeline for the season with lots of photos and short descriptions of the year so far.
