NINTH LETTER Literary Journal

The Challenge

Ninth Letter is a literary journal produced in partnership between University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Creative Writing Program graduate students and the School of Art + Design. In the fall of 2017, I was one of 17 students selected to work on Ninth Letter Edition 14.2. As a group, we were responsible for the design, image development, and production of the entire book.

The Team

Location: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
School of Art and Design

Creative Lead: Brock Landrum

The Solution

We selected an overarching theme of transition, typeset systems, and image styles. I was one of three designers in a sub-group working on the Contest Winners section. Unique to our section, we budgeted for the Contest Winners pages to be printed on iridescent paper, allowing it to stand out against the rest of the book. Additionally, I was one of two people working on the colophon. We took a more experimental approach here and lifted inspiration from its partner page in the spread. As a more subtle but unique contribution, I came up with the idea for our scrolling pagination system.

As a final product, the journal won the Applied Arts Fall 2018 Student Awards Winner (top 10% of total entries) as well as the 59th Communication Arts 2018 Design Competition, Award of Excellence (top 3% of 3,894 entries)