Design
As we are solely an online publication, my design skills are shown in the varied multimedia elements I incorporate into a story. My piece about food stipends demonstrates this the best, highlighting design in the infographics, featured image, broadcast, slideshow and additional website. This story made me prioritize succinct contextual information with appealing graphic illustrations, aesthetic slides and easy-to-follow transitions in the slides and videos. Together, this created a stunning feature and broadcast pacakage.
Web
Additionally, I created new logos for the Letter to the Editor and for the Student Council elections, as some of the most foot traffic The Oracle website receives is when students discover who is the Student Council Exec Board and Middle School President each year.
Currently, I am working on a proposal to change the aesthetic and accesibility of the entire news site for our Site Excellence badge for SNO Sites. Changes include color changes for pull quotes, potential new logo design captions for broadcasts and easier access to sports teams schedules and scores.
Infographic
To better display relevant information for a story or data and responses from a school survey, we use infographics to display this. I've incorporated infographics in a number of stories. For instance, this year I had the entire staff fill out a survey to state some of their identifiers to create an infographic highlighting the different ethnicities, religions and more.
When the results of the California Science Fair came back, I wanted to highlight the winners through a Q & A style infographic to congratulate their hard work and research. With bright colors and images, it brought readers directly into the story.
Graphic Illustration
Throughout this past year, I've grown more comfortable making graphic illustrations using Adobe Illustrator. When there is a story that a photo doesn't fit with the angle at hand, graphic illustrations is what I turn to. For many of our editorials this year, that has been exactly the case.
In each event, I try to capture the essence of the story still. For instance, when focusing on the stress during finals week, a frustrated student hovering over a desk seemed best. My abilities or graphic illustration have grown to the point of creating them for others. For a news story focused on the low turnout at affinity meeting in the aftermath of the Monterey Park Shooting, I captured that horrendous reality by making a mainly dark graphic of someone looking at a screen of news, capturing how students are destigmatized to mass shootings in America.
Social Media
During the 2022-2023 school year, I started a new show on our Instagram called Question of the Week. I would go up to students all around campus and ask their opinions about a fun question, such as what TV show were they currently watching. Thus, in Adobe Express, I created several templates including social media like the ones below. I also made a template for anyone to create a podcast soundbite for a post.
