Ball State Daily News
Creative director (2018 – 2020), designer and developer (2016 – 2020)
As creative director for The Ball State Daily News, I led the editorial design of the print paper as well as digital presentations. I developed enterprise stories and also led my team in an effort to enhance the visual design of our social media presence. I also created illustrations and graphics as needed.
Print design
From data visualization, illustrations, conceptual art, and everything in between, I covered every aspect of the editorial design for The Ball State Daily News between 2016 and 2020.
I served as the creative director from 2018 to 2020 after leaving my position as design editor in 2017. In 2017, The Daily News made the switch from printing on broadsheet to a full-color tabloid, which came to the design team with a pretty loosely-defined style. After learning the new style myself during my term as design editor, I was able to streamline the style of the recently-redesigned newspaper by the end of my term as creative director.
The Shondell Effect
The sports editor pitched a story idea about the history of volleyball and the Shondell family in central Indiana, but was looking for a way to package it into a series of stories that would be released over the period of a month, updating on the site as they published.
See it here →
My role:
I was involved in planning meetings to help facilitate the direction of the project. I was able to create a style rules for the site and gave design specifications document and mockups to the developer that took the lead on this project.
2020
Decade in review
As the 2010s decade was coming to an end, The Daily News wanted to create a collection of storytelling that reviewed the past decade.
See it here →
My role:
I led the overall design and project management.
I made the illustrations, set the print and digital layout and created style specifications. I also created graphics that run on the website and assisted other staff members with the development and publication of the site through The Daily News CMS.
2019
Hearst Journalism Awards Program 2020-2021: Multimedia Innovative Storytelling Competition: 11th place
Unclear
I created the style, layout and graphics for this digital presentation. I sourced video and created the animation in the topper. I worked with other developers to bring in content and and publish the site.
See it here →
2018
SND Best of Digital Design 2018: Local Issues: Bronze Medal
The balancing act
A collaborative effort by a photographer and writer, this story followed what a day in the life of a single parent who is a college student looks like, so they asked me to collaborate with a feature page that would play to the photography that carries the story.
See it here →
My role:
I was involved in the story process from early on in the reporting and photography, so I knew the story would focus around the photos and I was able to create design specifications that emphasized this. I wrote the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript and also created the graphics that are included in the story body. The reporter also wanted to implement audio, so I researched ways to do this while keeping in mind I did not want it to take away from the photos.
2019
Social media design
As The Daily News strived for a stronger focus on digital content due to a reduction in print production, it was quick to see that the Instagram presence was slow to catch up.
The DN on Instagram →
My role:
I led my team and The Daily News in an effort towards a more visually-driven social media presence on Instagram.
I created a style guide for the social cards and also designed many of them myself. The design team worked alongside the social media team to determine what would be visually interesting and engage followers on Instagram.
