Design
In my belief, a design is something that has to supplement a story. While the story itself does this mainly with words, design can do it mainly through visuals. However, making something visually appealing is completely different from making a written story appealing. With language comes a fixed set of rules. Design does not have this constraint. With a little inspiration and getting into the mind of your readers, a great design is achievable.
A Football Life
Inspired by attending my brother's Pop Warner games, I created this story to explore varsity players that started playing football in Pop Warner as Tiny Mites (their lowest weight group, therefore, the youngest play here). I wanted to show contrasts between the players while they were in Pop Warner and how they are in high school. Since the story was all about football players, I used a cutout of a football player as the backdrop for all of these pictures.
And that's the Key
Phil Ziglar is a key figure in my journalism journey. He was one of the first interviewees that had left an impression on me. Not only was he an amazing interview, but he was also an amazing person. When he announced he was retiring after 43 seasons as a coach, it felt like all those interviews had led to this story. The design needed to fit a football theme, so since the story was a retrospective of Ziglar's career and the man himself, I created a timeline that resembles the laces of a football, and made the background a light brown, reminiscent of pigskin. As for the photos, I had to contact four other schools and dig into my school's yearbook photos in order to gather them all. Ziglar deserved nothing less than my best, and I felt like I gave it to him with this page.
Crash Course
This story had a monumental number of statistics. So much that not all of them could be included in the story, so I knew I had to incorporate them into the design somehow. In the end, I created this page, inspired by a sports magazine design I saw, I took the main subject of the story, a damaged car, and placed it front and center. Then, like rays, the statistics would border the car. It's a simpler look, but an effective design that communicates further information about the topic the story covers.
