This was my second in-depth package, and by this point in my design journey, I had enough experience to really run with the idea and have fun with the design instead of stressing about details. I worked closely with the Midway's illustrators to make the special elements (like the "pie" charts and "bar" graphs) look as good as possible. I believe this design exemplifies some of my absolute best creative and excecutive work for our paper editions.

When I started as Arts & Entertainment Editor, I was suprised at how much work it could be to design 2 pages in one cycle. This is one such example from early on, with much of the content also having been produced by me. Two-pagers for A&E were also always great lessons in sidebar writing, as I often wanted to fill extra space on a page with information or details on a topic. I got most of my experience with sidebars through being A&E Editor.

This was my first in-depth package, both to coordinate and to lay out on a page. My goal was to honor the work that the young reporters had done and make the page as cohesive as possible for the reader. It was challenging to bring everything together on the page in a way that felt pleasing to the eye, but I worked with one of our illustrators to devise a color scheme, and designed the page with clarity and readability first and foremost in my mind.

The "Hollywood High" page was my first experience working directly with a Midway illustrator and executing our shared vision for the design. This was also the illustrator's first drawing for the Midway, and we signed him on after this particular illustration was published (it was a huge hit)!

"Windy City Wizards" was a good lesson in planning for spacial problems on a page — the stories ended up being a bit short, and I had to make the main photo bigger than I originally planned. I don't make that mistake anymore!

"Keeping Time" was an exciting first exposure to non-traditional page design, as we put the actual story over the photo in order to juxtapose the subject of the profile with the text itself. I had a great time figuring out how to make the page interesting and unique while still being readable.

This was a page where I had to figure out how to make an engaging main photo for a profile where we weren't able to take an action shot of the subject. I ended up getting to practice crafting complex graphics and was really pleased with how it turned out!

I was really proud of how diverse this page was in terms of culture and language. It wasn't specifically planned to showcase these two languages and cultures next to one another, but it made me feel like we were amplifying many voices and doing our jobs right.

The sidebar next to the "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice" review was my first "extra element" that I had to write myself as A&E Editor, and it taught me how to plan and execute a sidebar as efficiently as possible while making it interesting enough for people to want to read. Sidebars must be eye-catching yet informative!