Design is Thinking (A Million Times Over)
/By Riya Singh ’23 — Design Editor, The Nassau Literary Review
Riya Singh ’23
When I was first given the opportunity to design a literary magazine for The Nassau Literary Review, it was the winter of my freshman year at Princeton, and the task was daunting in more ways than one. Of course, when asked to do so, my first and immediate response was yes! because it meant another chance to do what I love, another project into which I could pour my passion for graphic design. In high school, I spent much of my time laboring in the Humanities Department’s back office, trying to balance learning InDesign and how to hand-bind zines, clouded both by confusion and an overwhelming eagerness to absorb everything I could about graphic design. So, when I found out making literary magazines wasn’t something I had to leave behind in high school, I was excited to start working on Nass Lit’s Spring 2020 edition.
Despite my enthusiasm, hesitations continued to loom over me as I began—what if this isn’t good enough? Yes, I had made designs before, but I had never done so for Princeton’s oldest literary magazine, and the thought that my work might be rejected was, frankly, terrifying. With the help of the previous year’s file as a model, I dove right into the design, choosing to fall back on what I did know, my stockpile of tips and tricks, as well as my eye for layout, which I had picked up through experience. It was far from easy: whether it was a laptop that hated me for having 20 tabs and multiple, sizable InDesign files open at once, or a particularly hard-to-format spread, things kept getting in the way. It was no surprise that, by the time I finished, some black coffees, all-nighters, and cramped fingers later, my brain felt muddled by the magazine. Sure, my heart raced and my hands shook while I sent that email with my first draft to Nass Lit’s editors, but I realized I had to trust the process, as is always important with design. After a meticulous back-and-forth of edits, countless questions, and nail-biting contemplation, we arrived at the final version of the issue—one that would remain purely virtual, in light of the pandemic’s restrictions.
Now, about a year later, I’ve just wrapped up designing my second publication for Nass Lit. The process is no less demanding, but I’ve developed a system to make things easier. The very first thing I do, even before setting eyes on the pieces, is set up my file, my home base, with appropriate dimensions, page numbers, A-masters, and the like. After that, I spend a much quieter period taking a close look at all the pieces to be featured in the magazine, visualizing the thread that connects all of them in theme. Order is very important in design, but so is the meaning that drives the flow from one work to another. Even before one word hits the document, the process is consuming.
When it comes to inputting the actual content, I use the file as a framework, entering in the relatively basic front and back pages to help me visualize the file as a book, an experience, rather than a two-dimensional computer representation. From there, I like to tackle the staff masthead and the table of contents, because they’re a great way to solidify what this magazine is, who it belongs to, and who it comes from. Then comes the “meat” of the design: the spreads of poetry, prose, and art that show off what Princeton’s students are made of, undoubtedly the part that comes with the most pressure. How do I design this spread so that it builds onto and complements the meaning of the piece, rather than taking away from it?
This time around, though, there’s something in particular I’ve noticed about the way I work, or perhaps, who I work with. Working on the Winter 2021 issue, “From the Crucible,” which contains countless works students created during the pandemic, I found myself struggling to convey the weight of the context from which these pieces arose. It was hard, honestly, designing something that I felt should be raw, a product of the particularly intense emotions that went into all the art and writing. I’ve always had a “clean” design style. Even when playing with abstract shapes, distasteful color combinations, or the funkiest fonts, I tend to stay within boundaries. It’s not a bad thing, but rather something I acknowledge about myself. For me to invest myself in design, I don’t need to shatter these boundaries, just swim around them. However, because each spread takes minutes and minutes of moving objects around, attempting multiple approaches, sampling one too many colors, and mostly just sitting back and staring at the screen, it’s easy to get lost. To drown. I felt this acutely as I went through more and more spreads, fumbling with what the overall design style would be, while also trying to perfect each individual page.
Once I had been scrutinizing the same text box, shifting it by millimeters, for a whole 15 minutes, I realized something had to change. Pawing at the darkness of my room at around 2:30 in the morning, I reached out for my phone, squinting at the sudden brightness as I pulled up my text messages. Who to get advice from, then—someone who’s given years to design like I have, or someone who knows nothing about it at all? I decided to go for both, because both of those sets of eyes matter to me. My companions who share a love for design nitpick and offer solutions I couldn’t think up, but equally as meaningful are the recommendations I get from my less experienced friends, whose eyes often catch the bigger picture. I value “maybe change the margins to match the page below” and “change the tracking for that poem” just as much as “i think these colors could use some work” and “i don’t know what it’s called, but can you move that big quote farther away from the rest?” Their words are like lightbulbs, sparking new ways to look at the same spread I’ve been dealing with, unsticking my mind from whatever hyper-focused corner it’s been dwelling in, pushing me to get better.
I’m ever grateful for those opinions, because without them, I’m sure the magazine would look much different than how it currently looks. This is not to say that what we’ve created is perfect—no, it’s still far from that as well, but when I look at it, I see the amount of thought that went into each image placement, each font choice, each color. What’s important to me now is that it’s not just my thoughts I see reflected in the design, it’s those of my friends, fellow editors (Kathy, if you ever read this, you’re great), and even the passerby glances of my siblings. Two years ago, I might’ve been scared of the idea of all of these opinions jumbling together, but today it’s something I find necessary, an essential part of my process I’m now afraid I can’t function without.
Saul Bass, the American graphic designer and filmmaker, famously said, “Design is thinking made visual,” and I’m glad he left the word “thinking” wonderfully open, reflecting not only the designer’s thoughts but also those of everyone who lays their eyes on the work. The product of that thinking is what I believe makes designing a piece like the Winter magazine such a challenging, stimulating, and rewarding project.