NSPA Designer of the Year Portfolio
Erinn Varga
STATEMENT​
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The singular, proudest moment of my journalistic career was my ability to get five writers in our print publication to try designing this year. If I could describe this year of our publication, I would describe it as a ‘year of trying.’
The beginning of my year as the West Side Story design editor began with a talk about how there would only be five designers for our thirty-six-page news magazine. My advisor asked me to create templates for simpler designs to account for our need for more time and resources. While I did make templates, I decided to go another direction: show my team that anyone can design, no matter their level of experience or talent. If I, an award-winning designer with only one year of experience, could do so, why couldn’t they do so?
The first writer to jump into turbulent waters found herself trying out Procreate for the first time. She made her original artwork to elevate her satire writing in The Radish. From there, she and I proved that anyone could try to design.
With a gender-equal ratio of zero male designers, one of the male writers wanted to try his hand. Somehow, he knows more InDesign tricks than I do and has just completed his first cover story. One of the shyest of the new staff members, he will take on the position of assistant design editor this following year.
Two juniors who have been writing exclusively for two years now jumped ship halfway through. Now, becoming our future editors-in-chief, they have equal competence in both writing and designing. I’ve lent my computer to one of them to design over weekends. I’ve worked long hours sitting between them in our computer lab, answering questions about hues and layouts.
In our last cycle review circle, a new and veteran staff member mentioned wanting to try to design as a goal for the following year. The year before, we worried about having no designers. This year, almost everyone is writing and designing.
Walking around the Foundations of Journalism class, our prerequisite class for journalism, answering question after question about complex Indesign elements I had no clue about two years ago, I have complete and utter faith in my ability to cement a tradition of trying when it comes to design.
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Erinn Varga
1. CONTRACEPTIVES​
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This​ is my second cover story in my time on WSS. This cover I challenged myself with infographics and a limited palette in hopes to create a clean and simple design. I included both art and illustrator work to create visually appealing and a welcoming look to an often uncomfortable topic. I didn't want to shy away from drawing contraceptives, as we are trying to inform about misconceptions and usage. I used pink and blue interchangeably as colors to represent the stereotypical representation of female versus male products. By using them interchangeably they represent that colors do not identify with a particular gender or align contraceptives with a certain gender.
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01/20/24 Six Page Spread & Glossy Cover
2. THE ARAB IDENTITY​
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I worked on this four page spread in honor of Arab History Month. I was excited to work on this spread because I got to learn a bunch about Arabic culture to make this spread. I decided to incorporate a background design including classic Arabic archeology. I also decided to incorporate different clothing styles to represent the vast differences in Arabic culture. I also wanted to include the language in the title and deck, so I had to work around the default Indesign setting to make it readable. I kept the colors light and the shading simple to create a clean effect, and used lines with the shapes to create dimension.
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04/18/24 Four Page Spread
3. EMPOWERING EDUCATION​
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While designing this four page feature on Tate High School, a school that many West High students have transferred to, I wanted to emulate the school colors and themes represented on their online website and their school. I primarily used a color palette of light blue with dark blue font and art, while including pops of orange accent color. I used a mixture of photos, art, and cut out pages from typical school notebooks to demonstrate the academic side of the story. I used drop shadows to create depth and layered elements to show a complex and intricate style.
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03/01/24 Four Page Spread
4. E-PASS EXPLAINED
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E-Pass Explained challenged my ability to convey my ideas while having space for writing, an infographic and a QR code in one page. I wanted to combine the old and new perceptions of our pass system, from paper to electronic. By being a primary writer of this editorial, I was able to design with the story to convey what I could not in words. I used muted colors of the passes in our school to represent the paper passes, and a black and white sketch for the electronic aspect. I also made interactive graphics for the online version, which can be found here.
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11/16/23 One Page Spread
5. EQUITY, NOT EQUALITY​
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Equity, Not Equality was a chance for me to include different types of people into a spread that argued about affirmative action and whether race should be taking into account in college admissions. I used cut out newspapers to demonstrate the amount of news coverage about affirmative action, and I drew the writer in the middle of the group as it was her opinion piece. I added waves of color in the background to add flow to the piece and life to the page. ​
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10/06/23 One Page Spread