SELECTED PROJECTS

‘Spring into break’: Spring Break Guide

This two-page section of the newspaper was a special section dedicated to all spring-break-related stories—ranging from covering students’ spring break plans to a humor piece on the people we try to avoid when returning home.

I was in an experimental phase of my illustration journey and wanted my illustration for these two pages to stretch outside the typical confining rectangle and surround the typography. I also experimented with a new illustration style here: angular, abstract shapes. The result was positively received—the editors mentioned it captured the fun, lively tone they had in the spring-break stories.

Read the main A1 story here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Football Guide

The Daily Orange sports staff launches into a major writing venture prior to each of Syracuse’s major sports seasons: basketball, lacrosse, and for this design, football. This year’s edition had a theme of “flipping the script” since various changes to the team were coming.

I had designed one sports guide prior to this, for lacrosse season, so I came into the project knowing what to expect. Armed with the powerful imagery provided by Syracuse Athletics, I designed this guide to be loud and bold, with style-matching graphics and a green color palette.

The graphics throughout the guide were created between myself and the digital design director, Maya Goosmann.

Check out the full football guide here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Winter Guide

Every year, the Daily Orange publishes a winter guide for locals and remaining students to check out the various activities happening over the holiday season. In this edition, we decided to include a recipe food guide along with a photo-based cover.

To achieve the cover photo arrangement, I drove around Syracuse snipping various evergreen branches and picking up pinecones from public parks, but it was worth the effort. Although we were relying on natural light, and it changed drastically in between photographing the cover and spread, we made the best of it.

I tried my hand at baking for this project and successfully made a photographer-approved gingerbread cake with a vanilla cream glaze and pomegranate seed topping.

The beautiful photos were taken by Anya Wijeweera.

Read the full winter guide edition here.

Behind the scenes snapshots:

SELECTED PROJECTS

'Hearty meal': Valentine's Day Themed Food Spread

This story was a recipe guide themed for Valentine's Day, from a Daily Orange columnist. Of course, chocolate-dipped strawberries and flowers were included. But the pasta was an unexpected take on "date night" food to level up the 2022 season of Valentine's Day.

The beautiful photos were taken by Meghan Hendricks.

Read the full story here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Winter Olympics Guide

In honor of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the DO dedicated the back page of the paper (the “sportsback”) to Olympic-focused stories.

The illustration concept here actually came after the design. I had three stories to work with and decided I wanted the secondary and tertiary stories to be as single columns on either side of the main story. From there, I sketched out a mountainous, snowy illustration full of various winter Olympic athletes.

Read the stories here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

‘Good Soup’: A Cozy Food Guide

This story was published in peak autumn and therefore needed to include a new, cozy soup for readers to try. The columnist featured a carrot ginger soup, with a coconut milk drizzle on top.

It was my first food spread for the Daily Orange, and I realized how fun it was to combine in-person art direction with editorial design. I embraced the cozy recipe by choosing a maroon, thick weave tablecloth. I loved the idea of using real objects in the photo as a text divider, so I placed the spoon in the space underneath the headline space.

Photography and art direction assistance was provided by Anya Wijeweera.

Read the full story here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

‘SAT/ACT Optional’

This story was one of those last-minute changes to the budgeted stories for the paper that night. The news broke during our print production that Syracuse University would soon allow new applicants to opt out of providing standardized test scores in their applications.

For the front page of the paper, I created a standardized-test themed illustration for the headline and beginning of the story to sit inside. The final touch to complete it was graphite-looking markings on the scantron answer sheets.

Read the full story here.

SELECTED PROJECTS

'Finals fuel': Ramen Food Spread

This story was a recipe guide from a Daily Orange columnist aimed at university students looking for an improvement on instant ramen (aka, 'finals fuel', for many).

When approaching this design, I knew I wanted to emphasize the healthier option to instant ramen. To do this, I arranged the scene with a crisp and clean white background, so that the vegetables' bright colors could shine.

This spread was the last big project I designed for the DO before handing off the reins to the next Presentation Director. The food spreads were some of my favorite passion projects that I did during my time at the DO, because of the freedom to be creative and get messy. And of course, the leftovers.

The beautiful photos were taken by Max Mimaroglu.

Read the full story here.

Behind the scenes snapshots:

CONCLUSION

The end of a chapter

The Daily Orange is an award-winning, fully-independent, student-run newspaper. It's also a place where extremely talented and passionate writers, designers, and photographers come together to collaborate.

In September of 2019, I stepped into the Daily Orange house for the first time. This decision began a chapter of editorial design and illustration work that shaped the designer I am today.

In May of 2023, my fellow Daily Orange alumni and I celebrated our graduation. We said goodbye (for now) to the newspaper that was home for countless late deadline nights.