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Designs
I've been the design editor of the newspaper for the past two years. My job is to make the cover and index as well as placing and designing stories, taking and editing pictures in addition to making graphics.
Covers
Our 2019 December edition was all about media literacy. I really wanted our cover to be glitched and pixelated to relate back to the news package. I took the picture on the cover and then imported it into Photoshop to edit and give it a distorted, glitched techno look.
Our January 2020 edition news package was centered around self-improvement in the new year. For the cover I searched for inspiration on Pinterest, where I found the rising popularity in doodled-on photos so I gave it a shot. Most of the doodles are health, fitness and wellness related to match the feature. To achieve this effect, I cut out the model and added the doodles in Photoshop.
Our November 2019 edition was our climate change issue, featuring many articles about global warming. I wanted to have powerful imagery on the cover and I think the earth in an hour glass captures the essence perfectly. I drew this graphic in Illustrator. You may notice there are more teasers on this cover than the others. At the fall MIPA conference we had this edition looked at by judges who told us there were too many teasers, so we dropped the vertical side teasers for the next editions. Constructive criticism is really important when working on a student run publication, and I take comments and suggestions very seriously when making our paper so that we are constantly improving and getting better at our craft.
This was the first cover I designed for "The Generator" back in my first year of staff. You may notice our logo is a little different than in the other covers. This change came after a trip to MIPA camp after re-evaluating all of our designs in the Design Like A Pro class. I also tweaked the ad for our website and social media in addition to teasers on to the cover.
Designing The News
When designing important news stories, the cardinal rule is to keep the design simple and let the information shine. The new ID policy was a huge change at our school my second year on staff, and the specifics of the policy weren't exactly clear, so I wanted to relay the information in a way that was easy to read and highlighted the important new changes.
When it comes to controversial topics like nude photos, it's best to tread lightly with design, but still be impactful. In the picture I took I chose to capture the shadow to suggest a different kind of selfie was being taken without making it blatantly obvious. I wanted to maintain professionalism while talking about a very taboo topic. I also drew the handcuffs seen in the infographic in Illustrator to add more interest in a design dominated with a lot of text.
This is one of the opinion pages from the 2019 November edition that I designed. For the pro-con article, I drew the muscular arm with a band-aid in Illustrator to go along with the play on words used in the title. For the story underneath, I wanted to capture the essence of cancel culture in my design. I made a cluster of cursors all pointing to the center to symbolize how people are signaled out and ostracized when they are "cancelled" online.
In our November edition about global warming, I wanted the staff editorial to have an eye-catching graphic that told a story. I made this melting earth graphic in Illustrator, and it became the focal point of the page. Using digital drawings helps to tell the story and add interest to important story that can get lost in a sea of stories.
Spreads
Our December edition this year was all about media literacy, so our staff editorial highlighted the "fake news" issue. I wanted to play off of how much politics is intertwined with fake news and social media. I manipulated the letters of "Fake News Nation" in InDesign using stars and stripes to make it resemble the American flag.
This year's February edition was focused on fashion, so when designing the feature spread, I wanted it to be trendy and allow for lots of pictures. I ventured out of my comfort zone and created a flowchart quiz for style. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I really surprised myself with how it turned out.
In this year's December edition, we had a variety of diverse Christmas stories that I used design to unify into a cohesive collection. I strung all the stories together by repeated use of ornaments and Christmas lights which I created using the pen tool in InDesign.
This is my first feature spread I was responsible for designing during my first year on staff back in 2018. This is the perfect example of how much I have grown in my design skills and knowledge over the years. This spread won me a first place award for alternative story form from MIPA that year.
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