charlieardengee
Print Design
Find my print designs from a variety of sections in our paper below.
Feature: All for one
Our school district offered both an online and hybrid program for students to choose from, so the online program was composed of students from all four local high schools. I implemented school colors from each school and created simplistic faces to show the varied emotions students had about interacting with students and teachers from other schools. I then went for handwritten pull quotes to match the art style. I used a unique layout to get the readers' attention with a powerful student quote. I did both the design and the art for this spread. It won Third Place for Illustration or Art at IHSPA 2021.
Profile: Rahamallah's road
This profile was about Ms. Rahmatallah, the only Muslim teacher at our school, and her journey from Iraq to Iowa City. I wanted to incorporate floral embellishments into the design, so I researched flower meanings and settled upon lotus flowers. Their meanings of resilience connected to her persistence at learning English, purity to her kind and wholesome nature, and rebirth to starting a new life in Iowa City. It seemed to fit well. The writer Fareeha Amhad and I wanted to make the article available in Arabic as well, and with the help of Ruba Ahmed I placed in Arabic translations for the titles as well as a QR code to the translated article. The photo was taken by Caroline Barker, and I did both the design and art. The art was part of my NSPA Artist of the Year Honorable Mention Portfolio.
Covers
Gender.
My original plan for this design was to use blue, pink and purple to show the traditional gender norms and the convergence of them. As I was putting it together, I realized that these colors were loaded with stereotypes, which is exactly what the sources in the article were challenging. In fact, any color choice at all would be loaded, especially with the fact that there are multiple pride flags with different colors for different identities. Therefore, I went with straight-up black and white. Although it may seem 'boring' as a concept, when paired with the rest of our vibrant and colorful issue it stood out more than any color palette could.
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It also went perfectly with my concept idea of old, damaged baby photos. I wanted to show how gender can change from the one you're assigned at birth, and how these baby photos can lead to an unrealistic depiction of who a person actually is (hence the faces scribbled out, and photos distorted). Originally, we collected baby photos from the sources. However, we unfortunately only had white trans and nonbinary sources. Due to the violence that trans people of color face, no one wanted to be a named source. I wanted the design to at least be representative of the trans and nonbinary community, so I sent a message in our West Side Story group chat asking staffers of color to send me their baby photos to use in the design if they were comfortable. I got tons of submissions, but I settled on Zaira Ahmad's, Ruba Ahmed's, and Jane Lam's. I did the design and art myself, but collaborated with Aria Khalil to help me edit the photos to make them look damaged and Zoey Guo for their handwriting as a title font.
Detached
This cover story discussed how online students felt disconnected from both their learning, their peers and the rest of the school. I wanted to show these feelings through physical space, so each student is on a different planet to show the true vast difference between their experiences. It also worked to implement in my graphic on the first spread, where the student is physically disconnected from the wifi with a play on an astronaut suit. I used a purple and green color palette because it's an unusual combination, giving the reader a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety similar to what online students were experiencing. I also used the art as a chance to show diversity by including people of different races, genders, religions, and body types. I did all of the design and art for this spread. The art was part of my NSPA Artist of the Year Honorable Mention Portfolio.
Sports: Wrestling with Stereotypes
This article introduced the girls wrestling team, which had just started that year, and detailed the challenges they faced. I wanted to use two pictures of each person to contrast what people may see them as because they look like girls (soft, happy, gentle) and what people might not see at first glance: their strength and passion for wrestling. I used a trichromatic color palette with a complementary color base to make the spread high-energy as well as present the multiple, supposedly conflicting identities of the wrestlers. I designed this page, and Maddy Smith took the photos.
Entertainment: Sights of Spring
When this guide to Iowa prairie plants was proposed, I was super excited to work on the art for it. I referenced botanical guides to accurately portray identifying aspects of each plant. I took special care in making sure I illustrated them accurately because I didn't want to lead anyone toward some sort of incorrect, poisonous plant. I did both the design and art for this page, and even helped with the writing. The art was part of my NSPA Artist of the Year Honorable Mention Portfolio.
Opinions
Ok, boomer
This spread was in response to a meme that had been circulating on the Internet the past few weeks at the time: Ok, boomer. It was a retort pointing towards the ignorance of the baby boomer generation, and columns editor Sumner Wallace gave her multifaceted opinion on it. The phrase (and generational wars themselves) had gotten a lot of coverage in the news and become very controversial. I wanted to tie that into the design of this spread, so I made a collage of all the related headlines I could find on the subject. I used the classic newspaper headline title to connect to this theme. Then, I placed a cutout of Sumner over the collage, as if she was pushing past all of the background noise with her opinion. Then, I added some inverted cutouts of her to make the page pop. The photo for this page was taken by Aditi Borde and the design was done by me.
The social shell
This opinion piece critiqued the rise of performative activism through social media. I wanted to use a similar idea in the creation of the design. The performative informational posts often have a certain look and style to them; they're very bright and appealing to the eye to catch people's attention. Unfortunately, this does not come off super well when talking about heavy subjects like racism and homophobia. I thought it would be clever to recreate that feeling, and thus framed the writers serious work with a fun-looking spread to show readers the irony in these posts. I also borrowed elements that I had seen as design themes in these performative posts such as airbrush effects, bold sans-serif type, and flower embellishments.