Design
Since I am the Director of RubicOnline, an online publication, I do not design pages like a typical print editor does. Instead, I design web layouts and the occasional page design (see my page designs for our feature magazine, Aureus, below). I've included the page designs for the stories written during Life of a Story, a summer journalism workshop I started last year. Read more about Life of a Story here. In addition to those layouts, I've included a story I designed after a peer wrote a story about the school that predates our current high school. I took advantage of the grid layout with SNO to increase interactivity for the long-form story.
Orca Tribe Project web page designs
Last year at Life of a Story summer journalism workshop, students wrote and edited their very own feature story about a local artist in the Twin Cities. Because the workshop lasted one week, the curriculum focused solely on journalistic writing basics and not elements of web design. After their stories were complete, I edited and designed their stories for Orca Tribe Project. The online design rules I've learned from editorial positions on RubicOnline have helped me follow the scroll rule, pick meaningful pull quotes and make the story an immersive experience for the reader. Below are selected designs of all stories I designed for the workshop. Click on the image to view the story on the website.
RubicOnline Summit School web page design
In my time on staff, I have learned to take advantage of the SNO WordPress story format features such as grid container, long-form container, and side by side chapters. Since I became Director, our website has drastically increased the number of long-form page layouts from workshops I've led. The story below was one I designed after another writer wrote each individual piece. I formatted and edited the images and linked the story throughout our social media.
Aureus page designs
For the first time last year, I designed pages for our feature magazine. Since I have used Adobe programs such as Illustrator and Photoshop since my sophomore year, the learning curve was not too steep. I quickly learned how to format text to interest a reader and keep my design simple yet engaging. In my design below, I used an image of a moon I'd taken with my camera and cut it out as well as placing it as the color for the story headline. I designed the zodiac signs and wrapped the text around the moon. I created a QR code for students to learn more about moon signs. To view the full magazine, click here.
This page design proved more difficult. I wanted to include a semi-transparent map with dots on the locations the people in the story were from, which took me a long time to format in Photoshop by cutting out the ocean. I enjoyed designing the envelopes on the bottom of the page, which contain the country colors from the different students' international friends. To view the full magazine, click here.
