I believe the building block to a great story is having great design. A story is nothing without design, and finding the correct packaging can bring a story to the next level.
I look to create designs that not only draw the eye in with dominant elements, but effectively convey all pieces of information in a story.
Below you will find some designs I have created during my time at FHNtoday.
Heading into my junior year, I knew the branding on our YouTube Channel needed a reboot. I looked to give the channel a sense of identity and utilize the new circular logo YouTube debuted on their platform.
I had no experience with InDesign or Illustrator, but I immersed myself in a week-long design class over the summer to learn the basics and came up with multiple designs by the end of the week.
My main goal with these designs was to make them simple and recognizable. I drew inspiration from brands like Target, whose red target logo is not complex but can be recognized by nearly anyone.
While I originally only used the logos as branding for FHNtodayTV, the Knight design soon became the logo across all of the FHNtoday social channels because of its clean, modern design.
Click on each image to view it in a larger size.
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I wanted to keep the animated introductions used in our network shows simple like the FHNtodayTV Branding. I kept them as short as possible, as I looked to create a sense of consistency for the viewer between episodes without making them sit through 2 minutes of an introduction.
I looked for each intro to connect to others through the FHNtodayTV logo, while also reflecting the anchor’s personality and style of the show through music and fonts. I created each animation on Adobe After Effects, and also used Adobe Illustrator to create vectors like the shield seen in Northside News.
In each edition of our newspaper, our video program is given a page to promote our new content each month. Showcasing videos in a print publication can be tough, so I looked to create a clean design that showcased information about our videos in packaging that was easy to understand and access.
I chose to use QR codes on each page to encourage students to easily view each video. Many of our students are very active on Snapchat and are able to use the app to scan QR codes on their phones. This method was much more effective in reaching our target audience and promoting our content.
I also wanted to draw attention to our lineup of FHNtodayTV Network shows that come out every week. I chose to place these shows on the side of the page in order to draw a distinction between the two types of videos and make them more noticeable to the eye.
[pdf-embedder url=”http://emilyforfhntoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/New-Page-Draft.pdf” title=”New Page Draft”]
When creating my four-part series, Life After, I found that I had lots of statistics I wanted to emphasize to put the scale of incarceration in America into perspective.
I wanted to organize the incarceration statistics into a form that was easy to understand. I used icons to represent certain groups of people or amounts of money to help readers fully grasp the scale of the information I was presenting.
This infographic presented the numbers in a way that was visually appealing to readers. It was more impactful than if I had simply written these numbers into the story.
Click here to view the infographic as a PDF.
[pdf-embedder url=”http://emilyforfhntoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Incarceration-Infographic.pdf” title=”Incarceration Infographic”]