Introduction
For this project, we were tasked to write a profile article about someone we could contact with and interview, and whose story/what they do inspired us. We used primary and secondary research, including secondary interviews, to strengthen the profile and convey their significance in the community. This project started in English with the profile, and from there, as a Design students, we made our profiles into Documentary books using Adobe InDesign, where we learned principles of graphic design, including text wrapping, graphic design elements (GDEs), leading, kerning, and tracking, etc. From there, in Digital Media we turned our profiles into magazine articles also using InDesign.
For my specific article, I immediately knew that I wanted to write about my grandfather, Leonardo Duarte, as I have always found his life to be very inspiring and I knew I could write an entire profile about him. I wanted to capture his career and his life, mainly including the hardships he went through but more specifically how he overcame them and used them to better his life and the lives of people around him. For my second interviewee, I interviewed his wife, my grandmother, Phyllis Duarte. This same article continued into Design, and for our books, we created GDEs in Adobe Illustrator. For my GDEs, I made them music themed because my grandfather was a band, orchestra, and choir director. For the main pictures in our books, we took photos of our profile and their space. Since a lot of my project was centered around the past, I ended up taking photos of old photos that my grandfather had. For Digital Media, I replicated the layout from my book for the magazine article.
Final Book
Magazine Article
Reflection
One thing I appreciated from this project was being able to write about someone related to me, who I care about and see often. Although in some ways, this proved to be a challenge because I felt like I wasn’t giving Duarte’s story enough justice. For the most part though, I enjoyed writing about him and capturing the story in a physical book form. I am also planning on studying graphic design in college, and doing this project only solidified that I want to continue doing graphic design outside of high school. During production of the book, I hit a road block because I was unhappy with the original photos I took, they were out of focus, weirdly framed, and this stunted my inspiration for this project. Once I retook the photos and liked the outcome, and once I added some more GDEs, I became happy with the final project. Then, there was the problem of actually putting the text into the book. For so long, we had had placeholder text in the books, and once I put in my actual profile, I realized it was a lot shorter than anticipated. I took me a bit to rearrange the layout at this point, so I could make everything work with the text. In the end though, I am happy with the outcome, and seeing the books in person made everything worth it.
Access to the full profile article:
Interviewees
Leonardo Duarte:
Leonardo Duarte was a band, choir, and orchestra director who went through many trials and learned to overcome them, leading him to live a happy life and positively affecting those around him.
Phyllis Duarte:
Phyllis Duarte is Leonardo’s wife, and she greatly helped Leonardo with the trials he went through. She was a secretary at Chico State University, where Leonardo worked as a band director for a good chunk of his career.