Responsibility
During my tenure as Creative Director for the Oswegonian student-led newspaper of SUNY Oswego, my duty was to create vibrant graphics for banners, new weather icons, covers for the tabloid section, section logos.
These graphics were tailored as digital illustrations made in Adobe Illustrator and exported as high resolution TIF image files in the CMYK color space to prevent conflict with the industrial printer. This gave the newspaper crisp and vibrant graphics that harmonized with the stories published alongside.
Deliverables
Weather Icons
The first task I took initiative on was updating the weather icons. The old icons were dated and difficult to see on the paper. The new icons focused on higher contrasts and a clearer depiction of weather events. With a bold black stroke around the illustrations and a cohesive design, the new icons are net improvement over the old icons.
Banner Graphics
Banners are long, landscape-oriented graphics on the front page of the paper just above the nameplate. While this space is typically occupied by an advertisement, there needed to be something when it was empty. Working with the editors, I created banners that related to the seasonal holidays around the time of publishing. For other times, I made a 'Help Wanted' banner to call for prospective student journalists.
Tabloid Covers
The tabloid section of the paper represented campus culture. The cover had to represent the hit pop-culture item in the minds of the students. As a result, the cover often reflected a video game, song, or movie. Each week I met with the Tabloid Editor to learn of the theme. The cover would always be a parody of the cultural session but using the 'Laker Review' title instead. These were always fun to make.
Section Logos
On top of covers, I was also making the logos for particular sections of the paper. These logos had to be eye grabbing and excitedly express the content below. Each one reflected the themes of the content.
Reflection
Graphics that are fit to print. Learning how to tailor graphics for the printing press was a journey. Unfortunately, there wasn't a predecessor creative director at the Oswegonian ready to teach me. I had to learn on my own, and I made great strides doing so. With each issue published, I would comb through the papers looking for issues to fix. It was fun just to spot issues and find the solution. Eventually I understood that I needed to use a image file format that supported the CMYK colorspace.