design for journalists

1.) One of the design decisions that I want to talk about is the logo that I made. I’ve always wanted to make a playoff of my initials because of “JK,” and how the letters are back to back. People always call me by my last name too so that’s why I also wanted the emphasis to be equal on the K as well as the J because not too many people actually call me by my first name beside my family. I wanted to carry the J over to the K with the top because both of the letters have straight edges at the top so a straight line connecting the two I thought could be a good way to connect the letters. I tried to keep the design simple and smooth because I think designs today are headed towards simplicity while also adding creative touches.

1. I think there are a few things I would redo if I were to make this social graphic again. Looking back at it, I probably should’ve put the description and saying of the show under the text at the top of “Inside the greatest political show on Earth,” in order to allow viewers to know what they’re looking at. I also could’ve cut out the network that it’s on (Showtime) to show where it’s located as well as the showtime logo contrasts really well with the black background. Also, I like how there’s not too much on the graphic but if I were to add other things I probably could’ve added flags like the blue one at the top surrounding the words at the bottom. The bottom feels a bit empty so maybe I could’ve added the American flag or white flags like the blue one at the top on the bottom to fill out the empty space.

1. I made a social graphic for a show on showtime which goes in-depth (this year) about the 2020 election. It’s a show I never heard of until this last year when I got more political but gives you a view from both Democratic and Republican voters.

11. With the design they liked to keep the colors very simple and patriotic (red, white, and blue), so I thought it would be smart to do the same with the coloring and font. Originally I didn’t put in the number for the babies kissed but thought it was pretty funny because I saw it in their intro and because this year is so weird this feel’s like the one race where I haven’t seen a baby been kissed by a Presidential candidate. I made the font bold and capital so it would stick out and also like how I made the numbers count down (from 2 to 1 to 0). Other than that I like the border I made around the boxes with the numbers in it too but probably could have added some of those white stars you see at the top and spread them around the page a little more on the bottom, but ultimately I think this is the best work I’ve done yet.

111.

1. There are plenty of ways that I see I can improve my information graphic. When I was filling out the graphic I didn’t realize how much text there would be and need to space it out better for the person reading it. If I were to actually publish this to a website I would make sure each box and the words are equally spaced out on each side as well as aligned to make it look neater. I also wanted to add some stickers or drag photos from the internet and make them cartoon-like you showed us when you were demonstrating how to make a graphic. Also, all of the quotes were from Trump but should’ve shown or said somewhere that all the quotes were credited to him. I do really like how the arrow points into the fire stickers and maybe at the start of the timeline could’ve started out with happier stickers that show where the United States was before the pandemic ravaged the country.

1. I wanted to show the timeline of how covid has expanded in the United States as rapidly as it has with the quotes of the president coinciding with the number of cases going upward. I think that when you lay it out like this you can really see the destruction that covid has caused to our country and around the world, but particularly the United States due to the lack of response and involvement from the government. I looked at statistics off of new york times and plenty of other publications so I guess the publication or what I’m covering are the quotes from the white house.
2. With the design, I wanted to lay out a timeline in the form of an arrow because there is so much information. When I was filling this out I realized there is probably way too much information and definitely not enough photographs. I tried cropping in a picture of the President and or President Xi but it didn’t look too good with the color adapted (making it look cartoon-like). I like how I put the fire at the end for stickers to show the direction that we’re headed in and tried looking around for more stickers to plant around the infographic but couldn’t really find any of somebody coughing or of an illness or something to signify a sickness. I lowered the opacities of the boxes but probably could’ve added a drop shadow somewhere if I tried to.

So with my animated gif, I ended up with a basketball rolling across the screen with some text under the NBA logo. Some ways that I can improve my gif include making the ball spin slowly all the way throughout. If you see at the end of the gif I spin the ball to try and make it look like it was rolling but didn’t do this throughout the whole sequence and just did it to the last few groups when the ball stopped bouncing to show that it started rolling. It looks like the ball is gliding instead of bouncing at the start due to this. Also what I wanted to do but found out after I duplicated and grouped all my layers were to make the lettering under the NBA logo pop up one by one slowly. Also with the text because the phrase I put under is “where magic happens” maybe I could’ve added an effect to try and show that the phrase had some “magic”. Also, I maybe could have added other elements as my first idea was to try and make the ball go through a hoop, but I wanted to make the ball resemble a tumbleweed like in western movies and found that putting the ball through the net and rearranging the layers was a little too difficult.

The mood board that I created I wanted to take risks in order to expose myself to some of the tools on photoshop. In hindsight, I probably should have played it safer if I wanted the final product to look better, but was having trouble just even finding the format I wanted my mood board to look like. I saw you edit in a circle in class, so I wanted to do that because it seemed harder than just copying and pasting square tiles but ultimately I needed to reformat the board. If I were to revise it I probably would have put the circle in the center with pictures equally on opposite sides of it to draw some symmetry. I also probably would cut out the color swatches even though they were recommended to show the color scheme we were working with and experimenting on. I also did have my grid up when aligning the pictures but wasn’t able to align them all perfectly causing some of the images to look off-center and making the board look disfigured. Also, I completely messed up on the publication and should’ve done something like bleacher report, ESPN, the athletic, etc. but I won’t mess that up again. I’d say that if I were more organized in the way I wanted to set up my board it definitely would have turned out better.

1.) The online publication that I am designing a mood board for is bleeding green nation, which is a sports page that devotes itself to covering the Philadelphia Eagles. I want to incorporate an actual eagle in the mood board to represent the animal and the mascot of the team and to provide a contrast in the pictures. I want the eagle to be one of the main focal points inside a shape that is different than the rest to make the color on the beak stand out because green already dominates so much of the uniforms.

2.) When designing the mood board I wanted to have a figure looking in at the mood board, whether that would be one or two players looking inward (I chose two). I put them at both sides of the board across from each other looking at the center to try and draw attention from the viewer. I wanted to put the eagle as the focal point to try and get some yellow out of the board as well because there is a lot of green that dominates the color scheme. With the eagle, different jersey color, and the goal post though I think there is a splash of yellow that helps drain all the green away. I also wanted to get different eras and conditions in which they played in to create more diversity within each individual picture.

3.)

1.)

11.) https://www.sportstalkphilly.com/

111.)

The local news organization that I’m choosing to redesign their front page is Bleeding green nation. One thing that I like a lot about their home page is the little bar at the top which helps the reader locate whatever they want to find, as well as make a link to other communities on SBNation. I also like the emblem that is used to signify bleeding green nation because when you first look at it you can almost make an instant connection with the Eagles due to a similar color scheme and design. The one altercation that I would make is that I would change the Eagle facing towards the side instead of facing towards you, but when it comes down to the emblem they created I think that it serves and delivers on its purpose. What I don’t like about the site is they don’t really have a top story that pops out at you because the stories are so close together it makes it seem like they all have the same weight even though this might not be the case. This also makes the website feel a bit clunky and disorganized as I would make a story standalone and pop much larger than the others to show the reader that one story has more significance than another. They try to make one story a lot bigger than the other, but when you cram 4 other stories right next to it, you lose the importance of the one, larger story. Along with this, they put their radio station a little below the top stories to where you can reach them but in my opinion, I would put that a little further up the page so it catches more people’s attention and keep the latest, least relevant stories at the bottom.