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Design Thinking NewsPaper and My Overall Experience

           I was going to originally go with an old-fashioned newspaper design with big bulky type and an old yellowed paper background. I did not like the way it was turning out so I completely re-designed it. I wanted a more modern and sleek look. I gathered ideas off of pinterest and took bits and pieces of other designs and complied them together. I focused primarily on an underlying theme that could be carried out throughout the newspaper. I chose to incorporate water and waves and use clever word play in order to tie it all together. I wanted the newspaper type to appear clean and concise which is why I chose to use black san-serif over a white background and organized everything into neat rows and columns. The blue and white shades in the water create a relaxing and calming tone throughout the design. I also included a couple of pictures from past projects in order to convey to readers the primal stages of design thinking. The four steps of design thinking (observation, brainstorming, prototyping, and implementation) are so important, I purposely reserved the inside left page for them. On the inside right page I go more into depth on my experience with design thinking. In order to really make it look like a professional newspaper I paid careful attention to headlines, subheads, fonts, font size, page numbers, consistent theme, columns, rows, pull quotes, color scheme, format, information, photographs, illustrations, and graphics. 

          I found this to be the most difficult project in comparison to my others (tri-fold brochure and mood board) because it requires a lot more detail, informative content, and formatting. It came to me much quicker, however, because I have exercised my brain with design thinking that I was able to breeze through the steps with ease. I did not get discourage when I found my first attempt unsuccessful because I learned from my mistakes and produced something much better than I had ever imagined. I kept looking at pinterest to gather ideas and find inspiration. I sifted through hundreds of pictures of newspapers and I paid close attention to all the details that make it what it is. Even during my printing process I was recognizing tiny mistakes that need to be corrected. I misplaced rule lines, saw that the type blended too much with the background, overshot the bleed lines, and made the font too big. All of which I went back and corrected only further improving my design. This was by far my most successful accomplishment as a graphic designer because I used the design thinking process and created something that I never imagined. I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried something completely different and it ended up working out. In the future I will be applying this way of thinking to my life as a means to encourage myself to continue expanding boundaries and stepping outside of my comfort zone. Everyone has the ability to become a design thinker; all it takes is practice and hard work.