Comet GALA & REPROM Photospread
For the final production of The Mercury for the Spring 2022 semester, these two pages were the original layouts that were published and made by the upcoming Graphics Editor. While looking at the layouts, I felt that there could have been more room for creativity to really draw in the reader and make it a more memorable piece, as it was about the two biggest events post-quarantine.
The overall design itself looked put together to just fit within the space rather than encompass a story. All the bodies of text were center-aligned, which felt a bit tacky and overused in the design. The graphic elements were also used sparingly and had little effect to draw in the viewer. It mainly served as a space filler.
Re-Design
In the redesign, I added more graphic elements to help allude to the theme of the two events, celestial. During the Comet GALA, there was also a paper crane installation that draped from the railings, so I created a small waterfall of cranes in the colors of the crane installation. Since both events had a rainbow color palette, I added more vibrancy to the rainbow gradient and the graphic elements.
I overlapped some images and removed the background on two photos to create a more visually compelling spread with layers. The text wrapping around the image in the Reprom spread helped to add more variety to the overall layout style between the two pages to give the reader a subtle surprise in the change in design. I felt that the original spread also lacked a few visuals that conveyed interaction within the Comet GALA spread, so I added a few where guests were doing an activity.
Although these two versions were not in print, it feels more self-rewarding that I was able to create a final photo spread that I felt passionate about.
