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My journey into layout and design started my senior at UNH when I was wrapping up a degree in Journalism. I knew reporting was not for me very early into the program so I focused on becoming an editor. I landed a full-time paid internship at the North Andover Eagle Tribune in the editorial department. My first assignments were copy editing social calendars and writing obituaries (not my calling, thankfully). Gradually, I was able to take on more responsibilities and moved to letters to the editor, features, and finally editing hard news. Although I have always had a keen eye for editorial work but I felt unfulfilled. Not to say writing 7-10 obituaries daily doesn’t take some finesse and creativity, but I wanted to be more involved with the design process.

After my internship ended I was hired as a night desk sports editor and got my first taste of layout. There are a surprising amount of rules that to be considered in layout in terms of flow and what you want your audience to take away from your publication. It is easy to be caught up in an amazing design but produce something that is disorganized or confusing. From fonts to image size and resolution, every night at the sports was an awesome learning experience. Working the sports desk is one of my favorite jobs that I have ever had (right under movie projectionist) but the graveyard shift was not for me.

So I moved on to the Community Newspaper Company (now Gatehouse Media) as a Pagination and Prepress Technician where I did less editing and more layout and design. At CNC I switched from the news of one section to laying out advertisements and designing whole publications. I produced 18 weekly newspapers for towns and cities in MA, meeting about 12 deadlines a day. This was an interesting position because even though the publications were for the same company, every town was independent and each editor had separate requirements and expectations for their paper. Here I got to work with, and more importantly learn from, design experts such as Kate Dempsey Knowlton, Jason Angel, and John Lockwood, who are all insanely talented.

At this point I knew for sure that I wanted a career in publication and technology. So I went back to school for Photography (which changed my life and perspective completely) and became educated on the best lighting practices, the best Photoshop techniques, event shooting, studio design and management, digital story telling, digital work flow and file management, etc … Although I no longer work for the media I have not stopped designing and paginating. Now I temper my photo skills with layout for musician album design, flash videos, web design, photo album design, and flyers and advertisements. Also I layout publications for organizations like Friends of the Fells and volunteer my services for non-profit organizations like the Point After Club. Below are a few samples of work that I have done. Enjoy!

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