EDITORIAL

I created the illustration for this layout by combining three pieces of stock art: the water at the bottom of the page, the droplet, and the globe, which had to be cut out of a black background. Creating photo-realistic translucent layers is one of my specialties.

The challenge in this layout was to illustrate a particularly dry policy topic. This story was a preview of a conference session that was to be hosted by the company I worked for, so it was especially important to make it look lively. Night photography and good portraiture are two surefire ways to inject some life into a layout, and we were able to utilize both here.

In this story about mental health challenges in the shipping industry, it was important to use abstract illustrations throughout. We didn't want to use photos that pinpointed any particular company and risk implicating them in a negative way, as the story was really about the industry as a whole. I started with stock art and amplified its brokenness, then carried the theme into the drop cap on the facing page.

I added a few stark visual punches to this story to keep it interesting: A bold opening illustration with a translucent overlaid headline; a strong color scheme of orange and cyan; and heavy pull quotes and rule lines.

For this story, I wanted a layout that  played up the theme of disruption by breaking a few rules. The headline falls off the page and over the gutter, and it sits below the deckhead; the drop cap and pull quote include color overlays that spill over their normal boundaries. For the illustration, I started with stock art for the binary texture, then amended the color overlay and added the lettering.

Welcome letters can sometimes be laid out so simply that readers gloss right over them. For this publication, however, we wanted to give them more of a splash to drum up excitement for the host city of an upcoming expo and conference. This particular city lends itself to panoramic shots of its main square, which fit perfectly at the top of the page.

When our annual Europe expo moved from Antwerp, Belgium to Bremen, Germany, we published a "Destination: Bremen" supplement to introduce readers to our new host city. In this feature, we wanted to showcase an image of the town square that burst with energy.

This story opened with a simple double-page photo and display headline, so I've decided to show a few more dynamic elements by focusing instead on one of the inside spreads. I enjoy the challenge of these types of layouts, which combine lots of photos, extended cutlines and body text. The trick is to balance visual hierarchy and logical flow. When you find the sweet spot, the resulting composition can be very rewarding.

In this story about digital versus face-to-face relationship-building, the editors wanted to include poll responses from an educational event our company hosted as breakout elements. I converted some of those responses into the pie charts on the left-hand page, and ran some in Q+A format on the right-hand page.

While it's sometimes a gamble to run body text in reverse on a dark background, in this case I knew that our printer would keep an eye out for registration slips – and this photo of a giant windmill blade was just too great not to run as a full spread.

This piece contained a photo essay, and in addition to laying out the story it was my job to curate the photos from the available options on the wire. They had to be relevant not only to the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort generally, but also specifically to the sector of the shipping industry that our magazine covered.