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LOS ANGELES TIMES
INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS
PROJECT SCOPE
Social Media Design
Marketing Strategy
BACKGROUND
I joined the Los Angeles Times as a summer intern in 2023, and served as a makeshift social media editor for a crazy and newsworthy 10 weeks. My main role was to support the audience engagement team in making content for a variety of the paper's sections and products. What started out as simple drag and drop work, turned into more strategic marketing campaigning and storytelling through newer avenues like graphic carousels, video reels and more.
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BREAKING NEWS
MAKING SPLIT SECOND DECISIONS DAILY
On the left is a post I made from one of the biggest stories of the summer, I learned quickly that news judgement was going to affect every decision, from design to my new role as a makeshift copy writer. With a push to focus on providing context to readers in the most efficient and accurate way, that meant visuals needed to be sidelined in some cases. With this story in particular, it was a pretty serious topic, so relying on just the copy was enough to illustrate the most important points of the writer.
I still remember my hands trembling as i hit the "post" button on this.
TEMPLATING
Using branded templates, each post would consist of a varying number of slides that contained information, photos and videos. These templates kept posts consistent over time, but only served as the building blocks to play with in future posts.
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HEADLINE
INTRO + CONTEXT
IMAGE/VIDEO VISUAL
PULL QUOTE
VISUAL + COPY
MULTI-PLATFORM
TRANSLATING WEB TO SOCIAL
One of the things that I love about design is that each creation feels like putting together a puzzle. With beautiful graphics and illustrated pages for specific articles, I get the chance to take the work of others and translate it to a social media canvas. In particular posts like the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" quiz, are full of artwork, thus my main objective is to highlight key components of the writing while also giving spotlight to amazing visuals that were intended for web.
to be honest, i'm definitely a Michelangelo.
CAROUSELS
CREATING THE
PERFECT SWIPE
On the left is a post I made from one of the biggest stories of the summer, I learned quickly that news judgement was going to affect every decision, from design to my new role as a makeshift copy writer. With a push to focus on providing context to readers in the most efficient and accurate way, that meant
INNOVATION
EMOJI-FYING THE
NEWS
A big part of visual design for news, is that you often are put in situations where innovation is key to your decision making. During a heat wave period, there was no strong visuals for us to illustrate key tips for staying cool in the hot sun, so and idea I brought to the team, was to use Emjois as our main artwork. Not only because of how symbolic and recognizable they are, but also because they simplify the need for long paragraphs of text and copy.
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along with the emojis, one of my other ulterior motives was bringing brighter colors to posts!
this ended up being one of my most engaged posts of the summer.
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VISUALIZATION
FROM COPY
TO CHART
Coming to the Times, I had access to so many resources I hadn't previously been able to have, so whenever I had the chance I would always try to turn lengthy copy with numbers into charts. This was my way to simplify complex topics as well as make posts more engaging.
IG REELS
DABBLING IN
VIDEO EDITING
After my short lived YouTube vlogging career, I thought I would never need to video edit ever again. Coming to this job, I was plopped in a variety of several media buckets, including creating, splicing and editing down IG reels. While it was a learning curve to learn again, it was fun to explore a new medium.
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The 2023 Maui fires, was probably the biggest event news wise during my time as an intern at the LA Times, and with that came a myriad of posts, illustrations, charts videos and more that I helped work on to be posted on social channels. One in particular that was quite special was the "Mapping the fire" posts, that I had directly converted from web to Instagram format.
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for these posts I tried matching everything from the background colors, to fonts so that audiences saw the connection and consistency between the online article and the Instagram post.
BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE
COVERING THE MAUI FIRES
SECTIONS
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LA TIMES
MAIN
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LA TIMES
FOOD
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LA TIMES
ENTERTAINMENT
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LA TIMES
CLIMATE CALIFORNIA
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LA TIMES
PLANTS
Alongside my daily production of posts for the LA Times main account, I also worked on post for other sections like LA Times Food, LA Times Entertainment and a brand new rebrand to the climate section called "Climate California."
FOOD
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Early on in my time at the Times, I was partnered with the audience editor for food, Amy. Through this, I had the chance to learn a lot about how the food section at the paper operates and especially how different the Instagram strategy is through the use of design. With a set brand, LA Times Food, is differentiated with the use of bright colors and carousels.
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this was one of the most fun projects I've ever worked on, and from beginning to end only took about one hour!
ENTERTAINMENT
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SUMMER OF POP CULTURE
It seemed everywhere you turned, there was something about Taylor Swift, the Barbie Movie or Beyoncé, there was no escaping them. With entertainment posts, I was super lucky to work with amazing editors that allowed for creativity to thrive, which led to some of my favorite projects of the whole job. From the A to Z's of Beyoncé to a full-on bootleg poster of the Eras Tour, there was so many creative avenues available.
shoutout to Ross May for the incredible illustrations!
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CLIMATE CALIFORNIA
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"Climate California," serves as a special section featuring stories on climate change and environment. This section allowed me to explore new ways of visualizing pictures on carousels and posts.
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PLANTS
LA Times Plants posts that I made were a fun partnership between them and another project I worked on called "Shape Your L.A."
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another great example of how to translate web visuals to social. all the colors and fonts were matched to the online package
I love this shade of green, and the gradient bar that differentiates the posts from other posts on the main account.
SPECIAL PROJECTS
With the success of section posts I worked on, I was added on special projects throughout my tenure. This included a community resource tool, a video series on Los Angeles food and working on social for the paper's short documentaries department.
LA TIMES
F.A.M.
SHAPE YOUR
L.A.
LA TIMES
SHORT DOCS
this was my opportunity to develop my own social media brand at the LA Times.
LA TIMES F.A.M.
"F.A.M.," is a series that features a local Los Angeles neighborhood through highlighting a specific restaurant, musician and poet. I was the sole marketing strategist for this project, developing an IG strategy.
SHAPE YOUR L.A.
"Shape Your L.A.," is a community resource tool for Los Angelinos to find more information about things like government contacts, community gardens etc.
LA TIMES SHORT DOCS
Short Docs serves as special unit of the paper, highlighting filmmakers and journalism content that deep dives into niche topics.
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