Design
For my first center story spread design, I wanted to create the effect of a scrapbook because the story was about the history of the town our school resides in: Belmont, which is also where I live. The title page's gradient from an old photo of the Belmont landscape to a new one required much precision in aligning perfectly. I love embedding headlines in photos because it makes the design feel more cohesive so I drew a path with the pen tool along the skyline and wrote the headline on it, reinforcing the "in plain sight" part of the story.
When I read this story about the trauma and abuse that teenagers had faced in wilderness therapy camps, I knew the design needed to match the serious and gravity of the story. As a result, I made most of the photos black and white with the people serving as pops of color to highlight the desolate and oppressive environment they were in and draw the reader's eye towards the subjects of the story. I also created a ripped photograph effect in photoshop by making a roughly shaped tear-like crop on each photo and inserting the paper-like texture. Wanting to help raise awareness about child abuse as well, I included a graphic with resources and hotlines to access aid and counselors if a reader had been in a similar situation of abuse as the one described in the story.
This spread on martial arts pushed my creativity as I envisioned making these local martial artists seem like comic book heroes, using a sliding effect to make them seem like they are frozen in the action. I gained more experience and confidence using Photoshop and layer to create the red silhouette behind the main figures on top. This spread received an honorable mention in the 2024 NSPA Spring Clips & Clicks Contest for Newsmagazine Spread Design.
For the second spread in the issue, the writer focused on medical gaslighting and its impacts on women's healthcare. To complement this topic and the artwork sent in, I added an underline to the headline that was color-matched to the mid-tone blue of the doctor's tie. This underline then transitioned into an electrocardiogram, or the line on a monitor that records heart rate. I also researched some statistics and created an infographic on the side to reinforce the claims made in the article. This spread won second place in the 2024 California Federation of Press Women contest for Double-truck Layout or a Magazine 2-Page Spread Design.
This third spread presented a bit more of a challenge to design. I initially went in a different direction, making the left page a collage, but I was not satisfied with how it looked. Instead I chose to make one of the images dominant, outlining her pose in white while setting the background to the deep purple of her top to create sharp contrast. I then text wrapped the article to the photo to integrate the image into the spread and added a secondary image to make the spread feel more dynamic. Finally, I created a timeline of a typical competition day to help the reader understand what a dancer goes through.
For my first issue as an editor for the Highlander, Carlmont High School's magazine, I designed the features section. In this first spread, I received an amazing piece of art from one of our illustrators on staff and I made it the focus and background of the spread, resizing it to ensure it fit the dimensions of the magazine. Then using the same dark, muted pink, and papery texture, I crafted a price tag with a pull quote on it to emphasize the consumerist nature of the angle of the article, which was how women were pushed to spend more on the same goods as men.
Infographics
There was not much room in the writing of my multimedia feature, "Getting on Track," to do as in-depth of a cost breakdown as I wanted on how much these families would spend on karting. As a result, I put it in this infographic with interactive elements so readers can click or hover over the buttons to find out how much each part of a kart costs and some hidden additional fees as well.
This is the first infographic I made to accompany an article, it was for the story Putting ‘unity’ in ‘community’: San Carlos Art and Wine Faire makes a comeback. It is an interactive map of the fair I covered, so there are several buttons within the graphic that can be clicked on to reveal pictures and captions of the fair. I wanted the people who read my article to be able to see what it was really like to attend this event, so I created this graphic to transport and immerse people in the story as if they were seeing what I saw.
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