North by Northwestern magazine

I joined NBN, Northwestern's quarterly, student-run general interest magazine, in the winter of my first year on campus and served as its creative director during my sophomore year.

A lot of my design style is defined by pops of color, high contrast and white space.

I love to use photos in a layout, but working on NBN remotely with little access to photos has allowed me to venture further into illustration — using visuals to add further meaning or understanding to a story.

To me, the most important part about creating a vision for a magazine is achieving cohesion.

For a magazine that covers a range of topics and can often include lengthy stories, this was a fun challenge to take on. And in the midst of a pandemic, with production shifted virtual, I also had to consider how to produce a magazine without the usual access to photos.

I was aiming for a sleek, professional-looking magazine despite having nine different designers (and styles!) on our creative team; to do this, I created a style guide that emphasized color schemes, a consistent typography style and white space.

Take a look at this selection of layouts by a variety of designers from the Spring 2021 issue. Each section is characterized by a color palette, which provides a visual cue to which part of the magazine you're in.