Today’s blog post is by Ainsley Adao, the Communities In Schools national office’s graphic design intern.

The dictionary defines graphic design as “the art or profession of visual communication that combines images, words and ideas to convey information to an audience.” I’m quite familiar with this term.

My name is Ainsley Adao, and I am a graphic designer. I am a college student majoring in communication design and the current design intern at Communities In Schools’ national office. My job is to create anything from flyers to posters, print and web banners, brochures and many other published materials. I take the organization’s communications and make them visually appealing – if not beautiful. And I love it.

Working as the in-house designer at Communities In Schools has greatly helped this young designer develop work and designs skills. I’m grateful and fortunate that I’ve had this opportunity to work with such a great organization, and at the same time gain real-world experience within the graphic design field. I’ve been proud of the design work I’ve done for Communities In Schools, especially of my latest project—redesigning the look of the InsideCIS newsletter and laying out the March issue.

Ainsley Adao - Self-portrait - 2010 - Oil on canvas, 11 by 14 inches

When I was asked to redesign the quarterly, eight-page newsletter, I felt surprised and honored to be given such a task. This was a major design project, and it was flattering to know that everyone trusted my design abilities. Excited, I started sketching rough drafts of my ideas right away. I wanted to produce a great design and do the folks at Communities In Schools proud.

For the new look, I aimed for creating a simple, clean and contemporary design. The newsletter was to look bright and welcoming to whoever laid eyes on it. Playful shapes and color harmonies were used to achieve this. For a vibrant appearance, I used an eye-popping, beautiful combination of bright oranges, cheerful yellows, a jewel-tone purple and shades of blue throughout the publication.

Another major factor that affected how I designed the newsletter was the desire for more editorial content. Everyone on the communications team agreed that the new design should accommodate more stories about our work, our site coordinators and our students. I worked to create a layout that allows more space for article text and images. After many experiments and countless changes with colors, shapes, fonts and other visual elements, I designed a new look that accommodated longer, more in-depth stories.

It wasn’t an easy task, but I’m happy I made it work.

I have my communications teammates to thank for helping me throughout this project, giving me their aid and advice throughout the redesign and layout processes. Graphic design is all about problem solving, and I very much practiced that while laying out the March issue of InsideCIS. It was a terrific learning experience.

Overall, I’m satisfied with how the redesigned newsletter turned out. I hope you like the new look as well.

Here is the March issue with the new design. What do you think?

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