DESIGN
Design is what transforms a good story into an eye-catching, engaging experience. From layout decisions to visual storytelling, I’ve worked to ensure The Stinger’s print and digital presence is as compelling as the stories themselves. Any of my editors will tell you how adamant I am about there always being a CVI on the page, and how I constantly stress the balance between white space and content to create a clean, readable layout.
Print Designs
After taking over the opinion section sophomore year, I led the editorial page through many different phases, starting off by formalizing the “About Us” section and the masthead. See different renditions of my editorial pages below.
April 2022
October 2022
December 2022
Picture the following: it's 3:30 on a warm April afternoon, and your deadline — your absolute, final, no-more-extensions deadline — is in an hour, and all of your photos for your centerspread have fallen through. This is the position I found myself in last April. Pressed to put together a presentable visual for publication that day, I spent hours layering different types of plants and foliage for an environmental-themed spread and story. In one hour, this is what I had completed, using (copyright-free) artwork in a fairly tasteful way to cover the spread.
April 2024
Earlier this year, I collaborated with my News Editor, Gabe Meyers, to create a front cover focused on Gov. Shapiro's visit to our school. I proposed creating a black gradient with white text on the page, allowing Shapiro to stand out. This is the final result:
September 2024
Design Mentoring
As I moved out of my opinion section editor position and into EIC at the end of 10th grade, my role in physically laying out our pages has diminished. However, as a leader in my newsroom, I've continued to work with editors on their pages, crafting new and innovative designs. Below are just some of the examples of pages I've collaborated on while EIC.
Take a look at our mockup of our most recent February issue front cover versus the finished product:
With the first rendition of front page, we weren't exactly sure what we were doing. Meeting with our news team, I worked with them to brainstorm ideas for how to visually represent our story without photos. The statistics ultimately stayed with the story, but were moved to a different page.
In the final copy, we went with something never done by our paper before: have no story on front page, instead moving it to page 2 (see below). I also commissioned art from one of our top staff illustrators to portray two sides of the multifaceted story.
Page 2 contains the actual story shown on front page. We used similar graphics from the front page in order to stress the cohesiveness of the two pages and ensure readers understood the flow of the story.
I've also worked with my features editor on designing our centerspread, collaborating on different design elements like CVIs, white space, and typography, making sure they're present and attractive.
See our September and December spreads from this year for how I helped maintain the design flow.
I worked closely on this spread about athlete mental health both in editing the story and the layout. I emphasized the artwork as the CVI of this page, while still making sure other elements stood out appropriately. It marked a nice introduction for our staff into spreads as our first issue of the year.
The point of this spread was that like punk, it was somewhat chaotic. I encouraged the spread's designer to capitalize on this theme, filing white space with.a variety of photos and graphics. I also encouraged her to — despite conventional wisdom — enlarge the header of "GRAVE VALLEY RIOTS" to make that the center of attention. Additionally, I specifically worked on the "Evolution of Punk Culture" graphic at the bottom left.
At the same time, I also made templates to make designers' and copy editors' lives easier.
For example, I made a template page from which editors can copy and paste bylines, columns, captions, and text boxes, ensuring uniform formatting throughout our paper. It has streamlined the design process and made The Stinger altogether more cohesive.
This template page and several others have helped editors not only with formatting, but with design as well.
To make design even easier, I compiled our list of design rules into a succinct two-sided sheet for the whole staff to use when designing and laying out pages.
Other Designs
I have also made several infographics both for The Stinger and other purposes, for in-print and online.
Below, you can find a couple infographics I made for stories in The Stinger as well as a timeline that featured in my National History Day project.
When submitting my op-ed to The Philadelphia Inquirer, I also included this brief factsheet to provide a summary of my article.
