2021 Michigan Journalist of the Year Portfolio
Design
With my joint background in digital illustration and the written word, some may believe me to be one who views design as the sum of its parts. However, since joining The Looking Glass staff at the beginning of my freshman year, I have become trained in approaching design as though it were a network, a series of flowing ideas that conglomerate into a compact message.
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However, it is easy to philosophize about design-- loving it is the hard part.
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Learning Adobe InDesign from YouTube tutorials and the principles of C.R.A.P. from Pinterest, bleary-eyed at 2 a.m., is the hard part.
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Cutting down hundreds of submissions into just thirty-two pages is the hard part.
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Facing countless threats of censorship from school administration for portraying the teenage experience as it is-- rife with that regrettable, sparky angst, people you shouldn't have dated, and things you shouldn't (or should've) done-- is the hard part.
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Then again, being the two-time Editor-in-Chief of such a powerful, loud, teenage, and just down-to-the-roots funky magazine is a pretty lovable job.
The Looking Glass: Volume 22
2021 Crown Award Finalist, Columbia Scholastic Press Association
​As the Editor-in-Chief overseeing the publication of Volume 22, I knew I wanted to expand upon the confidence I had gained as the previous volume's Supervising Page Designer and define the newest edition's design by what I truly wanted from Volume 21: cohesion.
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A bit ironic for the year's theme being "Warped," but in collaboration with the Supervising Page Designer, we created spreads that didn't just read seemlessly-- our readers couldn't imagine the chosen pieces not paired together. Through subtle yet conscious teases of color as in the "Noctiphobia" spread to the creation of an entirely new narrative with the pairing of "Forgiveness Under Surveillance" and "Dear Whoever This Regards To," Volume 22's design succeeded in allowing for the works to not speak for themselves, but to speak together.
In the end, my first year as the Editor-in-Chief of The Looking Glass was just as experimental as the magazine itself.
(Oh, and winning a 2021 CSPA Crown as first-time submitters/competitors was a pretty rad way to start my second.)
The Looking Glass: Volume 21
Serving as the Supervising Page Designer for Volume 21 of The Looking Glass as just a sophomore, I learned a valuable lesson regarding balancing the need for technical skill with the desire for creativity.
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In other words, I barely knew how to setup my InDesign template, let alone design thirty-two distinct pages.
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In retrospect, designing Volume 21 of The Looking Glass reminded me of how necessary confidence is when acting on one's abilities. Spending that same year as The Tower's graphics manager prompted me to take design risks that my page designer self felt too inexperienced to approach, as demonstrated by the "Ludo" spread leaping off the page and the speech bubble I created myself that ties together the "Pi/unk" spread.
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I am still immensely proud of and grateful for Volume 21, as the entire edition was a stepping-stone-turned-playground that was crucial in preparing me for the creative challenge of being Editor-in-Chief.
