I thought this project was a great way to not only discover a new part of the city but also to gain design experience. Visiting Brighton Beach and writing about it was a good way to become introduced to the vibe of the neighborhood. I think that creating a newspaper based on it was helpful in understanding the way design can give a feel of a place. Adding Russian details and making the paper very local and community-oriented helped me pay attention to detail and learn to hit a target audience. I loved getting the chance to learn how to use InDesign and I think it will be really helpful to me in the future. It didn’t take long for me to get the hang of it, as I was already familiar with a lot of other Adobe programs. I think that the critiques and feedback from other classmates, and getting to see other peoples designs helped me learn a lot about the process of things relating to journalism. I struggled a bit with putting together some small technical elements such as alignment and font sizing but I definitely improved over the course of the project. Getting the design to work with all of my group members articles and information was difficult, especially when I wasn’t supplied with information right when I needed it, but I think I did a good job at work It out in the end. I am interested in communication design so this was definitely a good use of my time and I think I gained a lot of skills that will be helpful to me in the future. Overall I really enjoyed putting this project together even though there were some hitches and obstacles I had to deal with along the way.
