C-Studio: Project One
August 30, Week One Reflection: This week, we began our investigation into grid structures and how print and digital media organize text, images and other elements. Having never formally learned about different grid structures, it was super cool seeing how even simple column grids overlay on top of the presented media. One thing I found interesting is how organization and interaction changes in something printed, like a magazine or book, compared to something digital like a website, in order to tell different stories to different audiences. I was super excited to start this project, because I follow the NYT Magazine on social media and I really enjoy their short “Behind the Cover” videos.
Even though the publication I’m researching is a printed magazine, in the future I think it would be a valuable experience to compare it with the website on desktop and mobile, now that I know more about its printed structure. I wonder how the seven column grid structure that my partner (Danny Cho) and I found within recurring segments of the magazine translate in the website, and maybe in the future I’ll explore that more.
September 06, Week Two Reflection: The narrative that Danny and I decided to use was starting from the history of the New York Times, looking at the three issues from a macro perspective, and then diving deeper into individual sections and analyzing the micro, before returning to how the style of the magazine is influenced by its name and prestige.

We started by placing the grids that we analyzed last week into context, and used the animation features in Keynote to our advantage to make our slides more dynamic and guide viewers through the different structural elements that we were analyzing. It was a good opportunity for both of us to learn and experiment with Keynote, as neither of us had ever really used it for presentations before. One problem we came upon early on was how to contrast the almost-white scans of the magazine pages from our white backgrounds (since we wanted a clean layout); the drop shadow tool was very useful in this aspect, although we had to customize the opacity and strength for different scans.


After our first run-through presentation, we decided we needed to make some of the micro slides more concise, specifically the slides from the recurring sections. Things were a little repetitive, and we went over time, so we’re currently working on establishing a more defined script, rather than just having talking points. There were mixed opinions from our peers about the clearness of our narrative, so there is some tweaking to be done in regards to headers and sub-headers on our slides. For the final presentation, we need to finish the concluding slides and wrap up how the NYT Magazine demonstrates the same authority and reputation as the newspaper does (in a return to a macro perspective).
September 11, Week Three Reflection and Conclusion: During the actual presentation this week, I felt a lot less nervous than the first dry run and the practice run during office hours, which is good because I definitely felt more prepared and familiar with my script. A funny thing that happened is that while Danny and I were a minute under on Sunday, having changed nothing in the script, we went a little over time today instead. I’m glad we were both generally more relaxed, and I’m thankful for the feedback we received from both Vicki and Juan, and the guests.
Doing this project made me really appreciate and understand the detail that goes into designing a publication, for not only something in print like the NYT Mag, but also for websites and mobile apps that also need to consider screen and browser sizes. (A quick aside; I just spent a good thirty minutes trying to analyze the grid structure of the website, and I don’t know if I’m just really tired, but it’s really difficult…) For a brand like NYT, the grid structure allows them to publish consistently and frequently, and after spending this time analyzing it, I’m curious what the decision-making process was like for establishing this format.


Overall, I learned a lot from this project, both in terms of technical knowledge about grids and layout, but also in designing a slideshow that needs to have its own narrative.
