My friend and co-worker Kinga Jakab at the time stumbled into the role of Features Editor one summer at UW. She pulled me on board as her assistant and I immediately took to designing the articles on the page using InDesign. It was a perfect pairing because Kinga was in love with the words and I was in love with the layout.

This was my first taste of desktop publishing beyond Wordperfect/Microsoft Word. Everything I learned about InDesign happened on the spot in that production office with fellow students and a kick-ass Editor-in-Chief as support.

We had our little style guide and we always adhered to both grammatical issues as well as heading size and font type, etc. As the Features Editor, I cared little for the rules set out in our style guide. As such, I found myself consistently in fights with the rest of the team to allow a different font type or to break the layout rules. I was, after all, working within the Features section. Midway through my time at Imprint, the key participants of the paper flew west to Vancouver for the annual Canadian University Press, where they were told by a prominent newspaper dude to, “fuck shit up”. What he meant was that they had an OK paper, with decent news coverage and decent style, but they needed to get dangerous. Suddenly, my breaking the rules in the Feature section was entirely welcomed.

Below are some of my favourite layouts from my time as Features Editor. Some were before the CUP conference when I had to fight hard to have a rule-breaking layout approved. I would like to think that another jewel in my Features Editor crown was working more cohesively with our talented artists to bring imagery that wasn’t so straight-forward as well as melding photographic work with illustration. One of my favourite results is the graphic accompaniment to Bright Eyes for a Sleep Head. Incidentally, in the same layout, you’ll see an article called The Wonder of Willpower. You wouldn’t believe the argument I had to make to allow the use of that bulky, bolded and tightly kerned font in WILLPOWER!!