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the patriot post
Graphic Design
Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator
Sept. 2015-May 2019
Overview
The Patriot Post is a bi-monthly student newsmagazine at American Heritage School in Plantation, FL. I was on staff from my freshman to senior year of high school. I held a variety of positions ranging from Entertainment Editor to Co-Editor-in-Chief.
The Problem: I wanted to solve an issue that I had noticed for years: low readership and ad sales.
As Co-Editor, I transformed the newspaper of 50+ years into a newsmagazine. It was a large undertaking as we had to redesign the entire magazine, negotiate with the printer, and train the staff.
In 2019, I won the Tom Pierce Photojournalist of the Year Award at the Florida Scholastic Press Association for my work during my high school career.
The Patriot Post Newspaper
The Patriot Post, originally a newspaper, was founded over 50+ ago and has been by a staff of around 15-20 every year. Its layout is reminiscent of any newspaper with half color and half black and white print. Students would purchase newspapers every month for 25 cents. Rooted in tradition, The Patriot Post hadn't seen any change in design and writing styles since its beginning.
Planning the Newsmagazine
After seeing other student newsmagazines at high school news and media conferences, I pitched the idea to my Co-Editor. We started to execute our plan the summer before our senior year to prepare for our first newsmagazine issue.
During this period, I developed templates, chose fonts, negotiated with printing companies, and trained my staff on an entirely new design process. My Co-Editor and I worked together to establish a new journalistic standard; one that would bring hard-hitting topics to the front covers of our newsmagazine.
I designed every single cover of the newsmagazine and most of the centerspreads.
My staff and their multiple awards after our transition.
Establishing that emailing a potential interviewee with no response is not a good enough excuse to not write an article.
The Newsmagazine
After printing our first newsmagazine, we saw readership go up and sold out our first issue, which never happened as a newspaper. Funded by ads sold to companies, we saw a 70% increase in ad revenue, something that we were struggling with before. Companies were lining up to buy full-page ads in our newsmagazine.
Besides an increase in readership and ads, the quality of writing and stories we pursued improved. Heavily censored by our private school administration, my Co-Editor and I saw ourselves in the principal's office pushing for stories we were passionate about almost every month.
The newsmagazine to this day is still one of my proudest accomplishments. For more examples of the newsmagazine, visit issuu.com/ipatriotpost.com between August 2018-March/April 2019.