Music at Yale Magazine
Type: Editorial Design, Print Design, Layout Design • Tools: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
A yearly alumni magazine at the Yale School of Music that highlights the previous academic year.
The 2023-24 edition of the magazine covered the accomplishments by alums, what the faculty thinks about AI and music, Dean Garcia-León's future plans for the school and much more. A collaboration amongst the YSM Design Manager, Director of Communications, and I that took a couple months to complete the final version. Last year's edition (2022-23) magazine was design by an outside agency. As a team, we decided to keep a similar layout design for certain sections of magazine, which then can be applied for the years to follow. The articles (noteworthy and feature) that needed to be stand out of the magazine broke away from the grid and let the visuals took precedence first. While much of the magazine was combination of design, layout, and typography decisions from the design manager and I, the AI article was left for me.
The AI article design decision came along later in the project. We were struggling on how to present this article on visual basis since it is a hot button issue. We wanted to have fun with it while still presenting the importance of article's subject. I knew I wanted to stray from the paragraph font (YaleNew) found throughout the magazine and it felt like AI was part of writing and design of this piece (but not really). What colors and fonts can mimic AI. Well, greys and blacks and a mono typeface. The result is visually stunning, design and words made by humans. However, my favorite design decision was to break up the word: AI throughout the article as it was interrupting the piece. A little acknowledgment to AI and it's disruptive nature in the world right now, particularly the creative industry.
And no, ChatGPT did not assist me in this piece either.
