For assignment 3, we had to make a newsletter for an organization. I chose my sorority, Chi Omega, for my organization because I know so many events and activities taking place in Chi-O and have many connections to people in this organization. Also, I wanted to choose an organization that I cared about. When I started making this newsletter, I first made a dummy layout of how I wanted the newsletter to look. I started to search online to see if I could find examples of past Chi Omega newsletters to get some ideas. Although I didn’t find too many, I did get some good ideas of what I knew I did not want to do. I sketched a few ideas out an paper, but then put the ideas into action on InDesign.

First, I decided that I wanted to put a letter from our president on the first page to welcome alumni, family, friends, and others to our first newsletter. For this project, I specifically focused on staying inside the margins on all of the pages. Although I had looked at this on my previous projects, I wanted to make sure that it was a priority for this assignment. When placing everything inside the margins, it also made the layout very clear and understandable. All of the text and photos were aligned well, and were clearly spaced. I believe everything is organized well and easy to understand and comprehend.

When coming up with the overall design of my newsletter, I wanted to make sure that everything worked well together and was consistent. So I ended up using only two fonts and four colors throughout the entire project. This way, I used repetition and did not make the newsletter look cluttered by multiple colors and fonts. Additionally, I made sure everything looked proportional on the pages to create balance. My pictures were all appropriate sizes and always went along with the news story. Lastly, I believe that I have the correct amount of white space on all of my pages. The margins are kept white because it looks cleaner if nothing is outside the margins. Inside the margins, I believe I did a great job utilizing my space and making sure there is white space, but it is used appropriately. My main focus was to produce an appealing newsletter that was organized, clean, creative and easy/enjoyable to read, and I believe that my newsletter achieved all of these traits.

The main colors I used throughout this newsletter were black, red, yellow, and white. I chose red and yellow because every sorority has official colors, which for Chi-O are cardinal and straw (red and yellow). Additionally, I chose black because it helped offset the red and yellow and still helped bring a pop to the page. At first, I was worried about not having too many colors on my newsletter, but I think it looks cleaner with only four different colors. The background of the newsletter is white because it makes everything clear to read and the colors show up better on a white background.

For the typography, I chose a font that I downloaded from the Internet called Corneia. This font is a script style, and looks very distinguished and polished. When I first saw this font, I immediately thought that it fit the classy sorority style look I was going for, and it would connect to women and girls. For the news stories, I used a sans serif font called Sathu because it looked clean and easy to read. Another thing I focused on was to make sure all of the font sizes matched up in each section and align with each other.

Overall, I think this project went very well for me! I just decided that every class period, I would try to work on a new page of the project and get it done. I think this project was different from the others because although it required a lot of time to complete, more thought went into the original formatting of the newsletter. It was really nice creating a dummy layout because I was able to just immediately add my stories and pictures into the newsletter without having to create a textbox or a place to put my image. For the next project, I will definitely be making a layout on InDesign before and then add my ideas into the assignment. Personally, I feel like I have improved on InDesign again because I truly learn something new every time I come to class. I also think I have improved by the way I manage my time for this class. I know every project takes a while to complete, so I know that I have to schedule time into working on it in and out of class. I really enjoyed making this newsletter, and it might even have a possibility of being published by my sorority! Hopefully, this will work out and the Chi-O Chronicle will become a reality! Thank you to everyone who agreed to be a part of my newsletter! I appreciate your help. Below are the pictures of my newsletter:

Originally posted at Megan Young - Gaylord Student