An annual university publication.
Campanile — A student-run journalism organization that creates an annual publication that pushes design limits.
Campanile.
PUBLICATION DESIGN
The Rice Campanile is the official student-run undergraduate yearbook of Rice University. Run annually by a group of elected students, this organization strives to document the major campus events from the summer before fall semester to post-graduation of the following year. The role of the Editor-in-Chief is to manage and lead an executive board and a staff team to plan, design, and develop content for a cohesive final publication.
During my time as the Editor-in-Chief, I worked with my executive board to develop and plan a ladder of pages, recruit and lead a team of hardworking and creative individuals to make up the staff, and create a cohesive design guide and library of elements, colors, and font choices. The role was a thorough test of my creativity, leadership, technical skills, and time management.
TEAM AND TIMELINE
Co-Editor: Phoebe Dang
Deputy Editor: Sahana Prabhu
Sports Editor: David Yang
Campus Life Editor: Rishi Ramesh
College Editor: Elaine Le
Photography Lead: Abram Qiu
Timeline: Summer 2019 - Summer 2020
SCOPING THE PROJECT
I worked alongside my co-editor, Phoebe Dang, to create the design guide, host planning meetings, discuss printing budget and payment of staff, attend Student Association meetings, and coordinate with the student media advisor. The editor of the Campanile performed similar tasks as a high-level managing position of a business.
THEME CREATION
Concept Building
Our first step in the design process was to think about a cohesive theme that we could build a design guide from, complete with colors, fonts, an elements library, and a general design language.
Theme: Layers
Layers is a very bold, colorful design theme that takes advantage of stacking different design elements to create a striking, modern publication. Layers represents the diversity in culture, background, and talents that our students at Rice University embody and choose to share with the rest of campus. Each student has a unique story to tell, and our goal of the year was to capture the moments where these layers were unraveled through the coverage of events, trends, and features.
Layers: An Introduction
When you think of layers, what comes to mind? Some may think of onions, lasagna, sweaters, cake, etc... For those with some design experience, you may think of Adobe Photoshop, and the layers that users can control to alter different aspects of an image. These layers can be separated and changed independently of each other, or moved and hidden from view. However, all the layers are necessary for the image to come together.
Every person at Rice is a layer in the final product; we are all separate from each other, and we all change in our own ways during the time we spend at the university. And each year at Rice is a different layer that builds upon the history of the university. Like any piece of artwork, it's not perfect. But in the end, despite these imperfections, we all come together to make Rice what it is.
AMY ZHANG
PHOEBE DANG
"Each student is full of many layers, coming together to create the rich and colorful campus that is Rice University."
INITIAL DESIGN
Design Guide
To guide our staff in the right direction, my co-editor and I created a series of pages that served as the design guide. In the design guide, there is a sample of one of each type of page that we included in the book, including events, features, and residential college pages. We compiled these samples into a design guide booklet that had a library of design elements and annotated explanations of each element.
Sample Pages from the Design Guide
FINAL DESIGN
A Cohesive Book
After finalizing the design guide, we began recruiting members and finalizing our executive board positions for the 2019-2020 school year, finalizing budgets, and planning for deadlines with Balfour, our printing company. We made a series of four submissions throughout the year, one for each season. Our final book was comprised of 352 pages, created by a total of 18 members on staff, including the exec board.
Though we used consistent elements from the design guide throughout the book, we offered the option for staff members to expand their creativity and try different layouts. Below are some of my favorite spreads that I both wrote content for and designed:
DIVIDER PAGES
SPORTS PAGES
AMY ZHANG
Reflections as a Design Lead
My goal as an Editor-in-Chief was to not only capture the 2019-2020 school year in its purest form, but also to create a club focused on community. The executive board felt that it was equally important to foster and cultivate a welcoming environment as it was to create a beautiful and cohesive final product.
As the organization with the largest budget of any club on campus, Campanile came with many challenges and successes, including documenting every major event on campus and hosting two campus-wide photography events to allow students to pose with their friends and get featured in the yearbook. Organizing a cohesive design theme for our staff members that eventually became the guide for every page in the book was incredibly rewarding as well. Leading this publication to success was a huge feat and an invaluable experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.
ORGANIZATION FEATURES
Fun Features
Some of my favorite pages to create and design were the fun feature pages. When allocating these pages on the ladder, we did not come up with set ideas because we wanted to encourage staff members to use their own creativity to come up with original content. One of my favorite feature pages that I created was a senior year bucket list, to inspire upcoming seniors to start thinking of things they wanted to do before leaving school on a campus, city, and state level.
EVENT FEATURES
Capturing the Campus.
And Beyond.
Our yearbook features may different types of pages, some focused on documenting university events, historical milestones, and academic achievements, and others reserved for featuring the uniquenss of Rice students and the comprehensive Rice experience.
Campanile — A student-run journalism organization that creates an annual publication that pushes design limits.
Congrats! You made it to the end.
Hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to check out my work! You can reach me at amyzh425@gmail.com — I'd love to chat with you.