LAYOUT DESIGN &

TYPOGRAPHY

I should have known back in 2015 when I first opened InDesign that it was going to be my best friend in my career. There's something about the problem-solving aspect of laying out a page that fills my soul and makes me truly happy.
So far in my career I have had the opportunity to design custom layouts for promotional booklets, sell-sheets, catalogues, and over 65 issues for the newspapers I have worked for. I also had the opportunity to learn and utilize the InDesign plug-in EasyCatalog to automatically populate custom InDesign templates with information from excel and absolutely loved this experience.

2021 LAWN & GARDEN  CATALOGUE

DEC 2020–APR 2021
Early 2021 I was tasked with designing the 2021 Garden Catalogue. This required creating a visual identity that aligned with the company, a cover page, covers for the tabs/sections, an editorial layout for house and preferred brands, and simple paginated layouts for all other products. 

RESEARCH

As always I started this project researching current design trends and creating moodboards to guide me along the design process.

After presenting the moodboards and my notes to the team I proceeded with creating the first round of concepts.

MOODBOARDS

IDEATION

Although I was aware that the company would prefer a design that would be accepted by all demographics I started with the most out-of-the-box concepts and finished with more user-friendly designs. This allows for more experimental ideas to come forward which inspires the team and makes it extra fun!

 

After presenting 6 different concepts wth 3 cover examples of each to the team we decided to go with a style that combines the friendliness of 1 and modern typography of 3.

Below are the top choices from the 3 cover examples I presented.

6  EXAMPLES OF THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTS PRESENTED

FINAL COVER

For the final cover and overall design of the catalogue we decided the perfect theme for 2021 would be to have a ‘staying home’ vibe to relate to the amount of new gardeners and plant parents that emerged from the pandemic.

To follow this theme I designed 3 covers to choose from and we decided on the one below for thee final design.

FINAL COVER MOCK-UP
FINAL COVER RUNNER-UPS
FINAL COVER DESIGN

TABS

Tabs are the pages separating each section with a tab protruding on the left side that allows for easy navigation.

I was inspired by a few of my original cover concepts and our monthly promotion design when working on the tabs design.

The Illustrations and full colour overlays were used all of 2020 in our visual identity for our promotions so using them in the catalogue was the perfect way to show consistency as a company.

FINAL TAB DESIGN
LEFT: ORIGINAL COVER CONCEPT, RIGHT: MONTHLY PROMOTION COVER DESIGN
FIRST  TABS CONCEPT 
VISUAL IDENTITY - COVER/TABS GUIDE

LAYOUT

This layout required 3 different templates: one for House and Preferred Brands, and two for Distributed Brands. To create these I reused old layout concepts that we know work and made some adjustments to make it new and to fit the brand identity of the catalog.

The House/Preferred Layout holds up to 10 products and was populated with Drag-and-Drop EasyCatalog method. To highlight the house and preferred brands it includes brand logos and descriptions, large product images, and extended product descriptions.

 

The Distributed 1 Layout is a fixed layout with 2 columns x 9 rows and contains 18 products. Each section was populated with EasyCatalog Pagination. This layout contains all the basic information about the products.

The Distributed 2 Layout is a fixed layout with 2 columns x 16 rows and contains 32 products. Each section was populated with EasyCatalog Pagination. This layout contains all the basic information about the products without an image or brand name to save space.

FINAL LAYOUT DESIGN
FINAL DESIGN MOCK-UPS

THE OTHER PRESS

JAN 2020–DEC 2021
In January 2020 I accepted the position of Layout Manager at the Other Press; a weekly student newspaper in New Westminster, BC. In this position I had the opportunity to lay out the weekly paper with help from the production assistant but also to design custom layouts and graphics pertaining to some articles. Each issue is laid out monday nights within 5-8 hours so the limited amount of time to design was always a challenge and a good learning experience. Below is a collection of some of my favourite spreads from my time at tOP. (Volume 46 Issue 19–Volume 48 Issue 14)

FASHION DESIGN PORTFOLIOS

SUBTLE SOPHISTICATION & EARTHY ELEGANCE
2016 portfolio - 2019 redesign
On completion of my diploma in Fashion Design in 2016, I created a fashion portfolio in my final semester. This included designing two full collection. This version was redesigned with all the same content in 2019 while I was studying graphic design.
SUBDUED SATURATION
2019
While studying graphic design I was given the opportunity to do one small self-directed project so I decided to design a new collection following the trends of 2019