The Student Review Page 11 - Wesley Fenlon

Fitting three stories onto a page sounds like an easy proposition, but things weren't quite that simple. Due to the length of my own story, as well as the other two, I ended up spending more time editing each piece of writing than I did creating the design of my page.

I had a rough concept in mind as I began designing -- because two of my stories covered the same topic from different angles, I wanted to package them together in a simple, stylish manner. I decided to use one large hammer headline to cover both stories, and give each a smaller headline giving a more detailed description of its focus. To make the design of the package pop, I gave it a red background and used an image from Mario to correspond with the video game aesthetic. I also added a small information box to the top right corner, explaining how to get more information about the topic at hand.

To make sure one story fit in two columns and the other in three, I edited out a few paragraphs containing overlapping information. That made enough room for two images, leaving the bottom fifth of the page to house one more unrelated story. It proved to be the biggest challenge, as it was too long to fit in the space I had left for it. Even after I edited it to fit in the small area, I decided I needed to add a picture to break up the amount of text on the bottom half of the page. That led to severe cuts, but ultimately it made the page look much better.

Though not every paper has to employ modular design, it seemed like the best way to develop a simple, clean page. In the future, I'd like to try packaging stories like these into a different format. Lots of magazines like this one are far more graphically intense and experimental than newspaper pages, and a more intriguing visual design can often lead to a more entertaining story.

I enjoy using InDesign, so working on this page was probably my favorite part of the course. I tried to develop a consistent aesthetic across the entire page by using lots of strong lines to separate the stories and make the hammer really stand out. If we had been working closely with one another to develop a consistent publication, I may have used a different color than read for the page header, but I decided to simply create something that looked good as a standalone page. To download a larger PDF version of the page, click here.