NEWSPRINT: Life Below Water
This project was built around the UN's 17 Sustainability Goals. The objective of the project was to educate the public on one of these goals through an 8-page newsprint / broadsheet. The newsprint would include multiple articles with imagery to accompany it. Instead of conveying the impending doom felt by climate change, the newsprint aims to lift people up, encouraging them to take action against the climate crisis instead of feeling overwhelmed by it. Throughout the project, I kept this in mind, steering my design decisions in a more cheerful direction.
Research
After choosing #14, Life Below Water, I started researching and brainstorming what kind of imagery and articles I wanted to include in the newsprint. Along with this, I found various media that included similar imagery on the sea and content about climate change to help inspire my newsprint. The articles I chose had an overall positive outlook on the problems of climate change, communicating solutions to our world problems.
Ideation
Using my research as a jumping-off point, I began developing specifics, including what typefaces and imagery to include. Making scaffolding decisions like these early on made my design process easier toward the end of the project. You can see a lot of handmade sketches below, I started leaning into this as the project advanced, thinking what If my compliment to the articles and text was hand-drawn illustration?
Hand-drawn elements
After building upon this concept in the ideation phase, I decided to implement it wholeheartedly. Using hand-drawn illustrations of fish and other ocean-related subjects as centerpieces for my pages. The colors I chose for these drawings were three colors: red, yellow, and blue. The primaries emit easy-going energy to keep the feeling of hope for solutions throughout my pages. Limiting the palette to three colors also helped keep my pages cohesive throughout the newsprint. I used colored pencils on paper to draw all of the subject matter and then scanned them into the computer to place on my pages. I like the sketchiness of these drawings; they contrast the clean text and maps, and they add a human element to my work, which I believe is important in the technological age we live in.
Some of many drawings.
Sketching
During the sketching phase, I worked to put all of my components together on the page, finding visually appealing ways to combine my text and imagery. I used dummy text columns to build layouts, finding my footing before putting in the real articles. Generating different types of layouts led to interesting configurations of images, these were built upon in the final version. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the front cover during this process.
Final
After finalizing layouts, adding article text to the body copy, and solving finicky details. I arrived at the final newsprint. The pages breathe the same visual style but are different enough on each page to create a unique experience throughout. The color and image treatment communicate a lighthearted mood and invite the reader to pick up the newsprint and learn about the UN's 14th Sustainability Goal: Life Below Water.
Digital
Print
MOCKUP
