Internship Series: The Virginian Pilot — Week 7
Backtracking a bit to the entertainment section
Over the past seven weeks, I’ve done a lot of news and sports design. I’ve learned a lot about the flow of the newsroom, managing my time and learning lessons about why close attention to detail is so important (I admit, I’ve made a few mistakes).
But a couple of weeks ago, I got to design for the Pulse section (a tabloid-sized entertainment section), which has stretched my design thinking and planning. This week, I’ll go over what I learned designing for not only a different section, but for a section with its own fonts, themes and flair.
Pulse
First off, I had so much fun doing this section. It’s so different than the typical news and sports section, and was a bit more like designing for a magazine than a newspaper.
The main story for the week was that Funhouse Fest was in town, an annual musical festival that features Sheryl Crow and Rhiannon Giddons this year.
For the cover, I wanted to convey the excitement and craziness of music festivals, but keep it tied to the theme of the concert, so I took a peek at the concert’s website for some inspiration.
I loved the bold colors and the bright pulsing lines, so I mocked up my own in Illustrator and used colors and gradients that were similar to the website’s, but were a part of The Pilot’s color palette.
On the inside, I wanted to tie in the pattern, but make it a little less intense, so I saved the bright orange-y yellow for the headline, and softened the pattern to a light blue, so as not to take away focus from the article.
Getting to work in a different section for the day helped jolt me out of my comfort zone. One of the things I really enjoy about working with more feature and entertainment articles is working with the theme and feelings of the story, and not just the cold hard facts of news. Stories like these provide a little more flexibility to try some more zany designs, play with bold colors and try new things.
This is the seventh installment in our internship series, where our contributors recount their news design internship experiences in weekly updates.
