Design
From Paper to Magazine
As an incoming Managing editor during my junior year, our editorial staff was faced with a significant task. After producing newspapers since the inception of our publication program, we had decided to switch to a magazine format. Additionally, the majority of our editorial staff that year, including myself, were first-year editors, meaning that we had minimal experience with InDesign. After the initial excitement about finally publishing in color, we quickly realized that we had a lot of work ahead of us. Our format was changing and our design style had to change with it.
As Managing editor, I worked closely with out Print Editor-in-Chief that year to facilitate this transition. Our first step was to decide on fonts and sizes. We then updated our folios and encouraged the rest of our editors to incorporate color throughout the magazine.
This is the style guide we created for the 2019-20 school year that includes guidelines for our new magazine design.
To view the 2020-21 style guide I created, click here.
Newspaper 2018-19
This is the cover of the April 2019 edition of The Pearl Post newspaper. I designed the layout of page 11. Click here to view the full newspaper.
Magazine 2019-20
This is the cover of the November 2019 edition of The Pearl Post newsmagazine, which was also the first time we published a magazine. I designed the layouts of pages 6-9. Click here to view the full newsmagazine.
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My Page Designs
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
This is the first layout that I created as Magazine Editor-in-Chief this school year. This is our second year creating a magazine. While taking into account the mistakes and triumphs of our last volume, I got to work and once again revamped our format. I created a new pull quote format that I sent to all section editors as well as redesigned our folios. As I've done for previous issues, I conducted a school-wide poll that was sent out to students virtually and used those statistics on pages 4-6. Although we decided to keep the basic structure of our table of contents the same, I changed the fonts and cleaned up the format to make it look more professional.
Describe your image
For our second issue of the 2020-21 school year, our section editors had to get creative with story ideas. Since our school is completely virtual, it became increasingly difficult to come up with unique topics to cover. For my section, I decided to cover the mental impact of distance learning. I created another poll and showcased the finding on page 5. We also covered student experience with solely virtual-based classes through platforms like Edgenuity and Apex Learning.
This was the first magazine layout that I ever created and it showcases the work our section editors and I put into the original redesign of our publication. Since we were all new to magazine design, our section editors began to slowly experiment a bit with color and styles, figuring out how to best present our publication and getting used to this new format. In retrospect, my layouts here definitely still looked more like newspaper designs instead of magazine design and I have been improving on this ever since. The statistics I used for the vaping layout were actually gathered from the very first student-wide poll that I had conducted so I had a lot of visually appealing elements.
I definitely began experimenting more with color usage while designing these spreads (I might've gone a little overboard with the orange on pg. 4-5...). I created a lot of graphics for these spreads since I felt that there were a lot of valuable statistics that should be presented to our audience. For my section this issue, we focused on teen stress and I once again conducted a school-wide poll. I started using different fonts for my headlines on these spreads to create a more visually appealing and clean look.
*Note: I did not layout the table of contents page
Creating these layouts were particularly stressful. I had originally planned to create an entire spread on climate change to align with our issue's focus on student activism. I had assigned two stories, one news story that you see on page 6 and an opinion story. Unfortunately, the opinion story was never written by the writer I assigned this to. About a couple of days before going to press, I realized that it was time to create a plan B in order to publish on time. I ended up including a blog that I wrote for our publication's website about my experience at the December 2019 Democratic debate. For my second spread, I focused on the 2020 Primary Elections and aimed to ensure that a variety of opinions were repsented.
The Front and the Back
As Magazine Editor-in-Chief, I am also in charge of laying out the front and back cover for the magazine. My favorite aspect of this process is bouncing ideas with the other section editors and creating something that truly encapsulates the focus of each issue.
Feb. 2020 issue cover
During the second semester of my junior year, our Magazine Editor-in-Chief at the time became really sick and was unable to attend school for all of January and part of February 2020. As Managing editor, I took over his responsibilities as EIC while still being in charge of mine. Although difficult and stressful, our staff was able to successfully publish this issue. While brainstorming for our cover, we decided that the focus of this issue was student activism and we wanted our cover to reflect that. We recruited students who hold a variety of beliefs and asked them to hold up posters reflecting those opinions.
Feb. 2020 issue backcover
Oct. 2020 issue cover
For our October 2020 issue, we decided that our cover should reflect the uniqueness of the 2020 election. We felt that the best way to represent that is through an illustration. I reached out to a DPMHS student who had created illustrations for us before and asked if she could create the cover art for us. I gave her direct instructions, asking to ensure that the mail-in ballot was featured as well as the fact that this election was occurring during a global pandemic. For our back cover student spotlight, I chose to highlight a photo taken during the DPMHS Senior Portrait day by our photo editor.
Oct. 2020 issue back cover
Nov. 2020 issue cover
We took a risk with the Nov 2020 cover. Our focus for this issue was the mental and academic impact of distance learning. While brainstorming, we came up with the idea of blending photographic elements with illustrations, which is something that our publication had never done before. I reached out to our staff and asked if one of them could photograph themselves sitting in front of the camera. Our staff writer Branden sent me the photo which I then sent to our yearbook editor Johnny, who created this cover.
Nov. 2020 issue back cover
To view the email conversation between the cover art
illustrator and me:
This cover received honorable mention on Feb. 1, 2021 in the magazine cover category by the National Scholastic Press Association
Infographics
While covering the Special Reports section of our publication, I found myself constantly creating infographics to accompany my stories. My goal for these graphics is to make them both visually appealing and easily digestible for students. Click on the image to enlarge.
