Critique 3

Well, I had the short talk department at Vox this past weekend. Teresa was my partner in crime, except we really didn't work together at all. She took page four and I did page three. Her story was on fondue and she had sidebars and a cool graphic, and her page turned out awesome. So big ups to Teresa for carrying the section this week. I had a story on an elephant trainer in a circus. We had a photo for this and so this was my dominant element. It turned out to look really simple and plain, but it actually took a while to do. The picture was too big using the Vox four column grid. If I made it go three columns the story wouldn't fit, and there was too much to cut. If I made it two columns it was too small and there was lots of space to fill, more than a pull quote, which would have competed with the photo. So, I had to go beyond the grid and make my own columns up and go between the two options. But nonetheless it is a clean page and the story is pretty good so hopefully people will be drawn to a story about elephants. I also took the initiative to do page 3, which runs with a half page ad. It had a flashback, which is a submitted photo and so it was old. It had a weird border around it and was hard to line up straight with the page. But I managed and everything got done pretty early. I know the editors appreciated our puncuality.
Now for my future plans this week. It is a very busy one, indeed. I am in the process now of sketching the four page feature for this week on Chinese dancers , so I am pretty excited about this opportunity. I am also supposed to help Andrea in the next couple of days complete Adelante designing. Our Vox logos, and the grafitti assignment are due in a couple weeks, so I will need to begin planning this out. My website portfolio is going to take shape Wednesday night. Also, Global Journalist stories are going to come to us anytime in the next week, and so I am will be gearing up for that. So there is lots to do. So little time to do it. Such is life...