Arete Student Academic Journal
Background
Arete is a yearly printed publication of work created by and for the students at St. Edward’s University since its inception in 1991. It’s purpose is to provide experience in publishing for the editorial team, design team, and writers who submit work.
Type
Academic Journal
Role
Art Direction | Typesetting | Design | Prepress
Solution & Impact
Working with the editorial team and junior designer, we set out to create the 28th edition of Arete. As senior designer, my role varied between art direction, theme, layout, image creation, and typesetting​. We also had to communicate with the editors as well as the faculty advisor in order to make a cohesive journal.
Myself and the junior designer decided the concept would be based on the greek background of the word “arete,” meaning excellence above all else. Through our research, we decided to use a classic Greek key motif thoughout and Greek architecturral imagery. We also wanted to incorporate the birds because of their prominence in greek mythology.
We decided on a classic serif for the body text and a simple greek styled sans-serif for titles. There are five different writing pieces in the journal so the junior designer created five unique illustrations of the muses to accompany each story. We thought this tied in well with the feminist themes in many of the chosen works.
Because we had a set budget, we were only able to use black ink for the body matter. I believe this constraight forced us to think outside the box which lead us to blacked out pages for the section breaks.
Paper choice and color palette were very important in creating that feeling of excellence. We decided on a burgundy linen paper for the cover and a white vellum paper for the text stock. A gold foil was added to the cover art. These colors and papers were chosen for their high-quality look and feel to create that sense of Arete.
It was a really great experience and I learned a lot in the two years I was on the Arete team. This publication was met with a good reception and many students were excited by the gold foil which contines to be one of those embellishments I love on a book.