Cover - Home
West Side Story Volume 54 Issue 5, April 22, 2022
I wanted Home to frame the topic of homelessness and houselessness in an approachable manner, so students may be encouraged to participate in solving this problem. This is why I made this cover design reminiscent of a children’s book that incorporates a visual story unfolding in each spread. I purposefully made the characters look like teenagers so our mainly high-schooler audience would be able to relate and empathize with the homeless/houseless population. I also tried to incorporate stylized versions of places from around our city – like the buildings downtown and the Iowa Memorial Union Walking Bridge – to illustrate how local and real this problem is within our own community.
Another design element to note is how the house/home is literally cut out of the page and missing. I chose to emphasize this through a dashed red outline. In hindsight, while the red dashes may have been redundant, I am ultimately happy with them since they gave me an opportunity to have a recurring motif throughout the spreads.
I opted to add personality to this design through the use of different textures since the shapes and layouts are fairly simplistic.
I also got the chance to create infographics for the version of this article posted on our website, which can be viewed here.
