Design

In moments of urgency and uncertainty, the way information is presented can be just as important as the information itself. I always keep in mind that I have a front-row seat to unfolding events and, therefore, aim to share the news with readers in the most compelling way possible. On a speed-focused, online-only publication, I have fewer opportunities for print layout, but I'm always thinking about visual impact on our digital platform. This mindset guides not only my reporting but also my approach to design and multimedia storytelling, ensuring that every story reaches the audience accurately and efficiently when it matters most.

Junior year, one of my multimedia projects was a Spirit Week timeline highlighting each event leading up to our homecoming celebration. Working alongside several photographers and a former EIC, I helped compile details and visuals from the first day of Spirit Week through homecoming night. This is a link to the timeline on The Paly Voice: Spirit-Week-2024-timeline, but it is also embedded below.

In spring 2024, I created a multimedia package documenting the major events of May 10 — the day former President Joe Biden visited Palo Alto and protests that emerged in response to his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Security barricades were placed around our school and surrounding neighborhoods, and our campus was closed for lunch. I spent extensive time gathering coverage and producing a comprehensive timeline to help community members better understand the sequence and significance of the day’s events. This was the first time The Paly Voice had ever created a multimedia package of this nature and my innovation was used again in the following years for Spirit Week. Embedded below:

Creating these timelines initially involved a complex production process. Creating them required using Northwestern’s Knight Lab tools, which provided a Google Sheet template to fill out with specific dates and times, headlines and text, as well as embed codes and links for videos and photos. There was a learning curve to this production process, but once I understood how the system worked, it became much easier to create additional timelines. Additionally, I created a presentation with brief guidelines so future staff members could make them quicker.

In spite of being on a strictly online news publication, I have dabbled in InDesign because of my reporting for Paly Incubator's social justice magazine, Anthro!, the literary arts magazine, Ink, and the science magazine, Veritas. For Anthro! and Veritas, I have helped create the spreads for my stories, including the following: 

2. Anthro!: Shouts among shoppers (Stanford mall protest) 

I worked on this story during my senior year alongside a talented Anthro! photographer, and the collaboration made the project especially exciting. Because the spread was visually driven, the writing focused on crafting vivid photo captions and a short contextual blurb. I loved the creative challenge of using just a few carefully chosen words to complement the images and help them tell a story.

4. Anthro!: Can you hear the people sing? (People's march and Tesla Takedown protest

This was another Anthro! spread that was visually focused. I collaborated with Anthro!’s news editor during my junior year, and we came up with a fun font for the story that combined both a People’s March protest, which I attended, and a Tesla Takedown protest that other reporters covered.