Critique: Softball Feature

For the past two weeks, I have been working on designing the feature for Vox. It was for a story about MU's Chelsea Thomas, who is the pitcher for the university's softball team and plays for team USA.

I was really excited that I got to design this feature because I didn't have any sports-related design clips for my portfolio, so this will be a perfect edition to my more usual designs which are usually more Martha Stewart living than Sport Illustrated. I think I have done more than a dozen spreads about food/cookbooks/cooks.

Initially the feature was slated to be a 4-page piece, but I was glad they decided to up it to 6-pages since the text was more than 2,500 words initially.

This is my first spread when it was 4-pages long.

While I liked the opening spread with the faded softball to highlight the text, I felt limited in my design because of all the words. In this version, there are too many pictures and they are all played way too small (because of the space limits).

I was disappointed that my softball design on the opening spread was not better received because I was trying to design something that was less "me," if you will. I think this semester has taught me that my designs are a lot like me: classic and fairly clean cut. I am definitely not funky and neither are my designs. So, I was hoping since I also don't typically do sports that this would be a chance for me to step outside my comfort zone a bit.

I think I did that, however, my more creative/funky ideas in the end were eliminated from the spreads.

This is my second attempt at the feature after it was turned into a 6-page feature. I took out the softball, but I added the gold box on the fourth page to highlight the portion of the texts that talks about Thomas' time on the MU softball team. As you will see in the final spread. That was also taken away because it allegedly made that portion of the text look like a side bar and prevent people from reading. I beg to differ. I thought it was a nice way to highlight and attract people's eyes to the story. But, in the end, I learned from the September Issue that often the designers are over ruled. So true.

By the third draft, I made some more changes, including changing the title (which was a great choice), turning the gold box gray, switching out some pictures and creating an actual side bar.

When I was told we were going to change the title, I was happy because I wasn't in love with the initial one but also nervous because working with typography is still very stressful for me, especially with two people looking over my should while I worked. However, I was very pleased with the way "Queen of Diamonds" turned out and how the two pieces fit together so well.