Collective Publication / Designer Interview

Project Brief

A student of graphic design is a very different experience than being a professional designer. Connecting with professionals to learn about the differences in timelines, processes, and expectations will illuminate the profession in a new way to current students. This project provided the entire class with a new group of connections and knowledge about the field prior to entering the workforce themselves. Students were assigned an alumni of the program/professional designer, they interviewed the designer, and organized information into an editorial layout. The individual spreads were collected and printed in a publication that was shared with students in the graphic design program. Additionally, the piece served as a collection of alumni stories for the college.

Learning Objectives

1. Students will contact a professional/alumni and ask them questions to enlighten them more about the possibilities of what they can do with their degree and about the daily roles of these possibilities. 
2. Students will do visual research on editorial design and find 2 examples that push the expectation of editorial design. 
3. Students will collage 6 analog compositions exploring the various ways in which to organize and apply a structure to their spreads.
4. Students will transfer into working digitally and compose all of their gathered information into sequential pages, following the parameters given.
5. Students will review and provide critical and helpful feedback on the work of their peers through critique practices. Additionally, the designer interviewed will provide feedback as well.
6. Students will respond to critique feedback and finalize their editorial spreads while maintaining a clear hierarchy through typographic decisions, color decisions, positioning, alignment, etc.

Deliverables

Student submitted all collage sketches and digital versions of their spreads. Their final contributions were collated into a book format and printed with Newspaper Club. The parameters listed here were to be followed for consistency across the publication:

Color Palette: 1 color + Black (with all tints of the color + greys)

Visual elements: The photographs sent by the designer (visual elements can be full color, not restricted to 1 color + black).

Typography: Whitney (Sans Serif) + Playfair Display (Serif) / Use 10/13 Book Whitney or 10/13 Regular Playfair for Body Copy

Format: 4 pages / 2 spread MINI (vertical) Newspaper Club

Grid:  page size 7.0866 x 10.2362 inches, margins .5, Columns 4, Rows 8, Gutters .125

Software: InDesign

Reflections

This project was a huge hit after the final publication arrived. Students were a bit skeptical about how each of their spreads were going to contribute to a larger publication. Having students be involved as part of the merging process would be helpful if done again. This project was executed at the end of the semester which is why the collating and merging of files happened by me in the following semester. Not all of the spreads were able to be included, therefore I decided which ones to include, in hindsight I would have liked to include the students in this process. I should also mention that each student used the same interview questions of which we wrote together as a class.

In the end this project gained a lot of attention in the department and beyond due to the fact that connecting students with alumni was a very positive experience. All alumni were former students that I had in the past and each was very eager to participate. A copy of the publication was sent to each of the alumni, they were all very excited to receive one. This experience connected alumni with current students as well as alumni to each other. It will be used as a recruitment piece for our program in the future.