This week's design Pick of the Week highlights illustration as a way to visually represent a story's message. The front page of Tuesday's paper, designed by Katherine Smidansky, uses colorful, hand-drawn representations of elements in the story to direct the reader's attention to the realities of Ohio University's energy usage. Sometimes stepping away from the computer lets designers create something with a totally different feel. Here, the decision to sketch the icons makes sense because the lines can be more organic. The colors chosen were energetic, and with a story about earth-friendliness and energy, these two decisions were effective.
The way that the graphic was integrated with the stories and other elements was also a nice solution. It can be a challenge to figure out what to do with the graphic you spent so much time on after you make it, and it's easy to center it above the copy as if it were a photo. Here, it's a nice change to have the graphics create a scene surrounding the story.
Design "Pick of the Week" is chosen by The Post design editor and highlights a graphic and/or page layout each week. Check back for more next Friday!
