top of page
Jane Ripps
Managing Editor, ODYSSEY Media Group
design
As a student in a school with an extremely low literacy rate, the importance of design and presentation has become increasingly vital to me as I have grown in my leadership positions. Through my color selection and organization, I have embraced my inner critic and media consumer to see which designs I would find interesting as a high schooler and reader.
Designing isn't just important for print, though. Because our media group is a convergence program, I have also applied this same creativity to my multimedia and alterative forms of storytelling.
infographic storytelling
Around December and the holiday season, I wanted to create some fast facts for our website about Hanukkah. I messed around with colorings and visuals and tried to make it eye catching. I highlighted key information in a different color to draw attention to that part, and I love the different shapes I incorporated.
.jpg)
To accompany my in-depth feature story on Extra Special People, Inc., which is a program for people with special needs in my community, I created this infographic to highlight the most important information about the program. I used their bright colors, logos, and symbols (hearts, suns, etc.) to capture their brand as well as draw attention. I also included the information in bullet points to make it more digestible to readers.
I wrote an oped about "Cop City" which is a police training complex being built in Atlanta, Ga, and I created this infographic to accompany the story. I used harsh colors to highlight the important information I wanted readers to immediately notice when they looked at it. Click the link to see it packaged on the website!
For Election Day, I created this infographic to educate our audience on the origin of such an important day. I used red, blue and white to tie back to the U.S., and I organized the information into different sections so it is digestible to readers
getting creative
For a feature story in one of our magazines, I wrote about the diverse fashion sense at my school. I knew a typically illustration wouldn't capture the unique styles in the hallways, and so I thought it would be fun to create a collage. Using Canva, I cut out and layered photo. I used magazine letters to write the words, and, even though it took a lot of drafts and a lot of time, I am really happy with the results.
When one of my staffers wrote a profile on a hair salon in Athens, I played around with using outlines in the layout to grab readers attention. Although I didn't end up using these images, this experimentation began my design process and eventually led me to including the bright colors and squiggly lines in the final layout.
designing layouts
Designing layouts for our magazine is probably my favorite part of my duties. It enables me to think outside of the box and be creative. The story's design is also what will stop readers from flipping past the page, so my designs typically include bright colors to grab attention.
To the left I have included an outline of what my design process usually looks like. Although it isn't the same for every layout, these are the steps I take to reach a design I am content with and proud of.
ESP for you and me
When I designed this story, I knew it had to be bright and bold. On InDesign, I had to be very creative to achieve the swoopy banners in the corner. I also messed around a lot with a border, and worked the spread cohesive with the color and lines. By using examples from old magazines, I figured out how to lay the pictures so the design wasn't cluttered.
around the corner
This was the first layout I ever designed where I had total control, and I had to find a way to organize seven completely different pieces of public art in a cohesive way. I started my design process SUPER early so I would have enough time to mess around with it. Eventually, I decided to experiment with cutouts in Photoshop, which led to the flowers in the corner of the last page. This was definitely a learning process, but it required me to be super creative and helped me grow as a designer.
the unchanged narrative
Given the fact that this story was commenting on such a sensitive topic (women's safety), I made sure that the layout was fairly simple and streamlined. I wanted to highlight the specific fears that female students at my school carry with them everyday because of their gender, and so I included an almost Q&A-styled section entitled "I'm scared to..." Diverse voices and faces draw readers in, and show the severity of the issue.
designing as a leader
Before I begin designing my staffer's stories, I always sit down with them and draw out what we're envisioning. Even though the final design might not end up looking like our original idea, it inspires creativity and gets my staffers involved and excited. I find that inclusion fuels motivation and passion, and so by conferencing at the beginning of the design process as well as throughout, they will feel in-charge and accomplished. And when our magazines come out and they see their story on the page, they also see their hard work.
presenting
For the GSPA 2023 Fall conference, I worked with the 2022-24 ODYSSEY Editor-in-Chief Molly Harwell on a presentation about designing. We worked on a really short deadline, but created a clean presentation to help guide student attendees on designing unique spreads. I love designing, and getting to look at awards winning designs as well as my publication's past designs taught me so much I didn't know before creating the slideshow.
bottom of page