Sunday, April 17, 2011

Business in Savannah and 'Twitter 101'

Every week, I get the privilege of designing our weekly business publication, Business in Savannah -- or BiS for short. At first, I was not excited about this opportunity. I had spent a few months being BiS's resident copy editor, and I found the content to be dry and boring. However, it has been growing on me. It is a tall tab format and mostly made of submitted columns from local businesspeople. There's a few profiles in each 24-32 page issue, and, most importantly, a double-truck cover story that is treated like a magazine article. While some of the cover story articles are questionable (local sausage makers, anyone?), the majority are actually pretty interesting.

One of these more interesting articles was "Twitter 101." It was a two-part series explaining the ins and outs of Twitter for businessowners. I was given some screen shots of the website and the chunky story, and I am really proud of what I made.


I traced the Twitter bird and added a few of my own touches to him. I also carried him over to the cover. Can you say eye-catching?


See? I get to do all sorts of cool stuff in BiS. Here are a few of my other creations ...




Sunday, April 3, 2011

Positivity

Recently, it has been hard to be positive about things going on in the workplace, but I have learned that while it might suck for a while (overworked, layoffs, etc.), having a positive outlook on things can only make it better. So, instead of whining about the bad, I am going to show you some of the good. A new project!

One of our business writers has started a new series, which I got the opportunity to bring to life. Each monthly piece will be about a different part of Savannah's real estate market. The idea is to give readers an idea of where to move, the amenities you'd get there and what's close by. It is a concept that just screamed huge infographic to me, so I got to toughen my Illustrator chops a little. We are two months into the series, so I have two clips to show you.

The first:


And the second:


The first one had a lot of things to map, so it looks a little more finished, but the second one shows just what the godley area is: suburbia. I also added a little county map to show where the area was in respect to the rest of the city.

I spent a lot of time developing the concept of a huge map and laying out all othe bits and pieces. It got rave reviews in the newsroom. So, what do you guys think?