Katipunan Editorial Spread
Katipunan is a cultural club located at the College of San Mateo, most known for being the first Filipinx club to be introduced to the San Mateo County College District. Found in 2019 by their president, Angeli Sanchez-Ong, Katipunan seeks to elaborate and teach its members the importance of one’s culture and taking pride within an inclusive environment.
The goal was to create a single magazine spread for printing. I was also tasked with interviewing, and taking photographs of Katipunan and their members
Sketches
Drawing helped me visualize different types of column grid patterns and image arrangements. Manipulation of the article title was also considered. The visual hierarchy was the most important in the layout design, as well as an emphasis on the club members and quote.
Sketches visualizing different column grid layouts, with an emphasis on picture/title placement, and main article quote.Version 1
After the sketching stage, two different editorial versions were created in InDesign. Version 1 contained a 1-column grid, a duotone theme, and a playful title. The group photo was taken in Photoshop to delete the original background. The secondary image containing Katipunan’s founder emphasized her leading the group’s activity, hence the decision to leave her in full color.
Version 1 of article spread; features 1-column grid and duotone.Version 2
Version 2 displayed a 3-column grid with a darker color palette. There was some difficulty composing the included photos and article quotes in a cohesive manner.
Version 2 of article spread; features 3-column grid and darker theme.Version 3
After the first initial critique, the one-column design found in Version 1 made word content appear too lengthy, and an orphan sentence was found from the wrap-around text quote. While playing around with an all-lowercase and wavy title seemed interesting, it wasn’t functional and coherent with the remainder of the article.
Version 3 featured cleaner organization and creation of more negative space.Version 4
For Version 2, there was minimal white space on the first page, and the quote wasn’t aligned with the body text on the second page. Distinctions after finishing one body of text were distinguished by a more negative space before starting a new body of text.
Version 4 featured more emphasis on title and white space.Version 5
Version 3 offered more space before each subhead, but was adjusted even further after revisions. One of the photo captions in Version 3 was in two different colors, and the page number didn’t offer enough contrast; these posed accessibility problems.
Both Versions 5 & 6 experimented with different type pairings than previous versions; this helped give the spread a much more professional look.
Version 5 of the article spread.Version 6
Word content and the second image were reorganized to create more negative space.
Version 6 featured a simple design with easy legibility.Result
Version 6 was chosen to be printed and published. The content organization flowed well, visual hierarchy was established, and addressed all problems mentioned during critique and revisions.
Mockup of chosen spread to be printed (Version 6).Insight
Attending their weekly Wednesday meeting and interviewing Katipunan leaders made me grateful — going out of my comfort zone and working with them lead me to learn more about my own heritage and culture.
The interviewing procedure and deducing the main points down into digestible content was difficult; however, I learned that working alongside people and making them comfortable is one of my strong suits.
I felt empowered to include pieces of my culture in later projects.