Sayge's Portfolio 2014

Sayge Bolli newspaper & yearbook portfolio

self-analytical evaluation

Over the course of the semester I learned a lot about deadlines. Being an editor this year, the importance of deadlines becomes very real. From the first time you try working on a page when some of the pieces are missing, you realize how impossible of a task it is. I had to deal with this on the yearbook deadline three night when a member of my team had neglected to write a story, and an hour of time that could have been spent designing, was wasted while we waited for him to write his story.

I came into this semester feeling rather confident that I knew everything I needed to know about InDesign. What I knew then was nothing to what I know about using the program now. After all of the work i’ve done designing yearbook and newspaper pages this year, I now know how to figure out essentially any problem that I run into while using the program, and I have begun to figure out the basics of using InDesign to create infographics.

I learned that it doesn’t matter if you like your team or not, if you do not communicate with them, the publication will suffer. For example, if my team had communicated better, we would have realized that the yearbook story was missing weeks before the deadline night, and would not have had to waste time that could have been spent designing.

For newspaper, there we didn’t have to do much advertising this semester, but for yearbook I saw how important it is to get senior ads. I worked with Christina Dragone and Nikki Toomey, my girlfriend, to post on Facebook and send out letters to make sure that we sold as many ads as possible.

After working on this staff for a year and a half I know that being dedicated to the publication completely changes the effort that you put in to it. New writers who could care less about the paper are often turning in their stories late and unfinished, while more experienced editors who have put in tons of time and effort realize that their dedication matters.

I hope to be able to use these skills in the future working for a magazine or professional literary magazine.

most significant piece of work

I think my most significant piece of work this semester was the yearbook dividers. I think that this is some of my best work because I spent as much time as was necessary to make them perfect. For the dividers we had to select specific students, find times to call them out of class, take extremely high quality photos of them, and spend a lot of time making them transparent, without any flaws.

Different parts of this process required different levels of effort. Choosing students was the easiest part of the process, and taking their photos was not much harder. There were a few instances when we decided to go back and retake the students picture, so we could have the best possible options to chose from.

Since last year I’ve been one of the only students who knew how to use photoshop to make photo’s transparent, and I used that skill to the max while making the dividers. Along the way I also taught several other staff members how to get cut out the smoothest transparencies possible.

The only really challenging part of this process was making the people transparent.

Doing this usually takes around five minutes, but because the pictures were so high quality and were going to be printed so large, it ended up taking around 35 minutes to an hour to cut out each person, sometimes longer depending on how easy it was to get around their hair type. My favorite part about the finished product was just how well the dividers tie together the entire theme of the yearbook. Each divider has a connector word on it to explain what that section will be filled with, and it just made the yearbook seem much more complete.

One of my favorite pictures I’ve taken so far this year, is of the nest during the homecoming football game. I like this photo because it can be really hard to get an interesting picture of the crowd during football games, because if there are too many faces in the picture they all start blending together, and nothing really stands out. This picture is different because I was able to get a clear picture of the crowd and all of their neon lights, but it was focused on one person who was standing out from the crowd. It doesn’t really follow any of the composition rules but it still works.

best photograph

I think the piece I did this semester that would most benefit from more work was the September photo essay “Look Ma, No Script�. Originally, when we submitted the September issue for print, I thought that the photo essay was in good shape and was as good as it was going to get, but when I picked up the paper from the printer and looked at the page, I realized there was a lot I could have done to improve the page.

Since the problem with this page was more in the way I designed the page, and wasn’t the content of the page, I did not really have a chance to revise it and make it better, since it was sent to the printer. If I had had time to change the page, I would have made sure I picked a photo with enough background in it to fit the captions on the photo. In the photo essay that was printed, the captions were on their own, against a white background, and I ended up really hating the way it looked.

could use improvement

asset to the staff

I am extremely dedicated to the production of the CSPress and the yearbook, according to my parents I am too dedicated and should spend more time on math and less time editing pictures. But honestly I would rather be locked in a room with Ashton Seep for 24 hours then stop working on these publication.

I think some of the more significant things I do to be an asset to these staffs is managing photos. Since I am the photo editor, all of the photos taken for the newspaper go through me, I spend a lot of time photoshopping photos for other editors who don’t know how to use the program, and overall I do everything I can to make sure the pictures used in our publications are the best that they can be.

final reflection

The biggest problem I faced this year was not having enough time to do the best job I could for both yearbook and newspaper. Some of this was due to procrastination, but a lot of it was also a result of signing up to be responsible for more things than I actually had time to accomplish. The only reason this really became an issue was when I had to choose between doing something for newspaper or yearbook, I always chose newspaper, because that publication is much more important to me.

If/when this comes up again, and I know I’m going to be working towards two deadlines in the same week, I will just start working on both earlier to avoid crunching in the last days. I think I handled these alright, while I made sure to get newspaper done first, I never completely neglected what I was supposed to help with in yearbook, and did as much as I could to help reach the deadline.

When it comes down to it, I like having more than I can handle going on rather than having nothing going on and wasting time. So starting to work on things earlier than usual will probably benefit me the most.

My greatest weakness in newspaper and yearbook is writing stories. Sometimes for newspaper, when I get to write album, concert, movie, or book reviews, I have an easier time, but I’m not good at writing news articles.

I could just suck it up and try and find time to write and sign up for these types of articles, but I probably won’t and will just keep signing up for as many pictures as I can to avoid these types of assignments. I’ll make up for all the articles I’m not writing by continuing to write captions for all of the pages that need them.

Designs - Spotlight - September

Designs - Spotlight - September

Designs - Spotlight - September

Designs - Photo Essay - September

Designs - Spotlight - October

Designs - Spotlight - October

Designs - Photo Essay - October

Designs - Spotlight - November

Designs - Spotlight - November

Designs - Spotlight - November

Designs - Photo Essay - November

Designs - Spotlight - December

Designs - Spotlight - December

Designs - Spotlight - December

Designs - Photo Essay - December

Designs - Dividers - Deadline One

Designs - Lavender Team- Deadline Three