Designing life around experiences and people

In Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch tells his young daughter, Scout, “You never really understand a person … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Spending the better part of the past two and a half years in the stuffy, windowless corner of 118 Kerckhoff Hall has taught me that you see things differently once you’ve seen them through a designer’s eyes.

My experience as a designer stretches back to the archaic cut-and-paste method of my junior high school yearbook, but designing for the country’s top-rated college newspaper has increased my knowledge exponentially.

Had I not joined the Daily Bruin, I would have never learned why modular designs are good and non-modular designs are bad. (Modular design makes the paper easier for readers to follow because all the elements of a story are grouped in rectangular packages ““ in case you were wondering.)

Nor would I have been unable to read my Psych 10 textbook because I was too distracted by the pages, which contained some of the coolest layouts I have ever seen in any book created for educational purposes.

Without my experience as a Daily Bruin designer, I would have never learned to be able to tell if the spacing between two elements is more or less than exactly one pica or if a font is one point size off.

I also would not have been upset, or probably even cared, when my English professors demanded our papers be turned in using the standard Times New Roman, size 12 font (because I think Georgia, size 11 font looks so much better).

The many hours I spent staring at blank layouts that eventually became something the entire UCLA community saw on a daily basis was a simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying experience.

As the Design director, whenever something went wrong in terms of design, I was the one who got the late-night phone calls. Conversely, when a layout turned out particularly well, I was the one who was complimented for a job well done, even if I was not personally responsible for the layout.

Such responsibility taught me many life lessons, such as collaboration, compromise, time management and leadership skills. I know these lessons will help me immensely as I enter the “real world” next year.

Joining The Bruin also allowed me to meet some of the most talented, hardworking people at UCLA. These are the people who saw more of me than my roommates did most weeks. I’m so proud of this staff for putting out such an amazing paper on a daily basis, even on those days when it seemed impossible.

Hopefully, I have shared some of my design wisdom with them along the way because I know the most beneficial part of spending my days with little sunlight and hardly any fresh air is the countless skills and lessons about myself and others I have learned from the many hours I spent at the Daily Bruin.

The most important thing my time at the Daily Bruin has taught me is that, regardless of how you look at things, in the end, all that matters are the experiences you have and the people you meet along the way.

Weber was the Daily Bruin’s 2006-2007 Design director.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *