Design
In a high school paper, it's the difference between making your message shine or allowing it to fade into the background.
Website Design Critique
Focus this Year
Website and print design are not mere aesthetic choices; they are the architects of communication in the digital and physical realms. Effective design can captivate, inform, and inspire, while poor design can hinder the conveyance of ideas. As students, mastering the art of design empowers us to express ourselves with impact and precision, ensuring our voices are heard and our ideas are embraced. So, remember, the importance of design is not just about making things look good – it's about making them work beautifully.
When we received critique on our website design this year, the Southerner staff, I included, took it to heart and worked to make the design of all stories a priority.
General Opportunities with Sno Flo Elements
Unique News Features to Develop Stories
Along these lines, I have discovered the wonderful landscape of the SNO Flow elements and their ability to enhance a story. Whether it be a quote box or a sidebar link to a relevant similar story, there are invaluable tools in the writer’s toolbox under the Flow webspace. In News specifically, the use of these features is especially important as we are trying to give our readers a broader context of all of our reporting that has been done on this specific topic.
Web Story Design with Sno Flo Elements
Superintendent Dr. Battle Story
The transition period between the two superintendents of Atlanta Public Schools was chaotic with a failure to renew the previous superintendent’s contract and an impromptu hire of an interim superintendent to grant the school board extra time to find the next best candidate. So, as I prepared a story for publishing about the new superintendent and plans for the district for the next year, I knew that it had to be well-organized in order to be digestible by the reader. This required using a particular Long-Form Container format with clear sections and useful side rails to guide readers to additional stories for context on the situation. Additionally, I utilized pull quote and extra photo additions to make a more vibrant and interesting platform to read off.
Web Story Design with Sno Flo Elements
Trump Indictment Story
The Fulton County jail and Trump indictments were multifaceted and complex. Therefore, the content called for division, for subtitles and guideposts as a reader progressed in order to stabilize and refocus the angle and nature of the story. Because we picked a local perspective, it was imperative to disperse subtitles throughout in order to distinguish our reporting from the national narrative. This story received a Best of Sno award for its content and organization.
Web Story Design with Sno Flo Elements
Isabelle Perry Story
Additionally, I assisted my fellow staffmate, Sports Managing Editor Cate Barton, with the design of an important story regarding the first ever female in our school’s history on the football team. The Sports editors had taken great eye-grabbing photos during practice of the subject, and I assisted them in understanding how to use the Sno Flow elements to best incorporate this multimedia.
Paper Design
Importance & Emphasis on Teaching Paper Design Freshman Year
The other aspect of design that we focus on is the physical paper, which is in its own realm. Throughout freshman and sophomore year, every staffer works hard to become adept in the inner working of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop in order to productively design pages.
Paper Design: Special Pages - Front Page
Superintendent Dr. Battle Story
Creative design of front pages is imperative. It is the first impression, either creating a reaction that beckons the reader to open up the rest of the newspaper or not. When working on developing the front page of our October issue, I ran into a block where the outline that I had created of the paper fell a little flat and had a large image across the top that was widely too big and too similar to the structure of our other pages. So, I partnered with two graphic design specialists on our staff Lily Rackwalski and Stalla Maximuk to develop graphics and readjust the sizing of the images in order to create a more well-rounded and aesthetically pleasing front page. It was that collaboration that made the front page ten times better than it would’ve been if we had left a large looming image over the top half of the front page.
Paper Design: Special Pages - DT
Alumni Double Truck
Additionally, I had the opportunity to design from scratch to finish a Double Truck, which is the inner fold of a newspaper, where the story span across two pages. This was quite the undertaking as I had multiple aspects to juggle, but with the assistance of graphics staffer Lily Rackwalski again, the page became a beautiful homage to the alumni that it celebrated and brought their essence of life to the pages.
Paper Design: Special Pages - DT
LGBTQ+ Life Double Truck
This Double Truck was all about a lively, inspiring culture. And we knew the paper had to match just that. So, in partnership with Design Managing Editor Lily Rackwalski, we constructed a page that proudly announced itself and jumped out of the page. The personal photos of students and community in combination with the rainbow fade brought the essence to the story that we hoped for.