THE OBSERVER

Teasers are small graphics at the bottom of the front page of The Observer, Notre Dame's school newspaper, that I create to highlight the stories that will appear in the paper. The goal of a teaser is to entice the reader to find the story and thus they must grab the reader’s attention. The challenge with teasers is trying to catch the reader's eye with such a small space. As the front page is usually not in color, I utilize a strong contrast of black in white to draw the reader’s eye to the teaser. All teasers are the same size, 1.92 x 0.75.

As a graphic designer for the school newspaper, The Observer, I also create banners. Spanning the width of a newspaper page, banners contain the title of the story with the full story presented below it. To create banners, I research the story and design a graphic that provides a creative prelude to the story. This can be challenging as the banners are all very long but not very tall, which constrains the graphics that can be created. Despite these challenges, I believe these banners catch the eye of the reader and entice the viewer to learn more.

As a graphic designer for Notre Dame’s school newspaper, The Observer, I am occasionally tasked with creating full pages for the newspaper. I am provided with the text, including the title, and a photo or two that I need to include but it is my job to put this information in a manner that attracts the reader to pause and read it. All of that information can make this task difficult as sometimes there is so much text that it is hard to fit it all in while still making it visually appealing. I approach these full page ads by researching what the story is about, including why each piece of information is seen as necessary, and then create a background design that visually looks good with the information that needs to be conveyed. These full pages are effective because the viewer has a quick sense of the text at first glance and can then get more details if they are interested.