Grey Matters Journal

Overview

Grey Matters Journal is a neuroscience journal on the University of Washington campus. They publish quarterly issues produced entirely by undergraduate students. Grey Matters strives to bring the public closer to neuroscience, while teaching members how to communicate complex ideas in accessible ways for everyone.

As an Assistant Design Director, I help lead a team of seven layout artists to adhere to publication standards.

Duration: 2 weeks per article
Tools: InDesign, Photoshop

Brief

Design engaging layouts for casual readers.

Approach

I begin by studying the forms of the illustrations to look for engaging opportunities to incorporate them with the text. After deciding on the general layout, I manipulate text wraps, leading, and kerning to maintain readability throughout the article. Finally, I pick an appropriate color palette from the illustration to incorporate into visual elements in the article.

Below are two articles that I worked on (Issue 13 & 14).

ARTICLE #1: Dive into the Mind of an Octopus

ARTICLE #2: Non-Invasive Deep Brain Stimulation

Working with Grey Matters has helped me practice typographic hierarchy and text/image relationships. Having worked with them for almost half a year, I have improved my efficiency with Adobe Indesign tools and capabilities.

As an Assistant Design Director, I’ve learned how to maintain design consistency across a large-scale project. The role has taught me an incredible amount about working with design peers by providing critique session and InDesign workshops.

Moving forward, I want to:

Continue to develop my leadership and communication skills
Fine-tune typographic practices like rags to improve readability
Illustrate my own article!

Reflection

Thanks for reading!