When you think of good design, newspapers aren't exactly your first thought. It was a medium that I never even thought of bringing design to, but every paper needs it.
In my opinion, newspapers need good design more than ever because in this tech-centric society we live in, newspapers are falling by the wayside and need to be visually interesting to keep up.
After having a foundation in design throughout high school and my first few years of college, I never considered joining a newspaper to do design work. But when I joined The Spectrum as an assistant creative director in the fall of 2012 and later became the creative director the following spring, it opened up so many different doors for me.
I found that transferring my design skills to the newspaper medium wasn't an easy transition. After having some time to adjust, the good ideas became more abundant as time went on.
In the spring I won The Rosalind Jarrett Sepulveda Journalism Education Award as a designer and had my trip to CMA's spring National College Media Convention in NYC paid for. The convention exposed me to designers in the industry from major magazines such as GQ, Vanity Fair, Esquire and tons of others.
The Society of News Design was also attending and giving presentations at the convention. This kind of opportunity would've been completely unavailable to me without The Spectrum.
The Spectrum has opened up an entire new field in design for me. It's something that I thought would be boring and has turned out to be very fulfilling.
I'm very excited to begin my final year as the creative director and hope to bring my co-workers' stories to life with the best design I can muster.
