Critique

This week I am critiquing my experience as a designer for Global Journalist. I was assigned a 3-page story about China's troubled press and the restrictions the Communist party has over journalism in China. It was a very interesting story, so it was hard to design because neither I nor the editor wanted to cut any of the text (we knew we had to cut some though).

I had a fun time designing for the magazine just because it was very laid back and I had a lot more say in how I wanted the pages to look. I wanted to add color to the front page, however I am so bored of just coloring a headline, so for a little twist I decided to have someone translate our headline "Out of control" into Chinese and I put the Chinese characters behind the head in red. This was great to get to slightly play with the title. Everyone seemed to like it and I think it will make a great clip, even though the following two pages of the story are extremely text heavy.

The nicest part for me was that the editor I worked with, Katie, was so nice and we really sat down and discussed the story and I even helped pick out photos with her. At the end, she was so happy with the piece that she said she wanted to request me if they have a May issue to design! What a compliment. That's why I like designing...to see the faces of the people I am designing for when they are happy with the way I have presented their material.

I'll try to post a photo of it later (for some reason the blog won't recognize the photos).