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USA TODAY
MAIN AUDIENCE
PROJECT SCOPE
Art Direction
Branding
Social Media Design
Digital Design
Audience Strategy
Illustration
BACKGROUND
I joined the USA TODAY/Gannett family in the fall of 2023 as a visuals designer on the audience team. Starting off this role I mainly focused on promoting stories to our Instagram accounts through creating visual elements and social cards, however as time progressed, the role morphed into a creative direction role for the company. At USA TODAY, I've touched just about every news design art form there is, from social media to print layout to onsite graphics. Furthermore, I was able to re-brand all of USAT's brand accounts on social and helped art direct our 2024 US election and Olympics coverage.
TEMPLATING
When I first arrived at USAT, my first objective was to update their social card templates to allow for easy and accessible designs amongst editors & writers. Once this set, it was easy to justify moving the branding of the product into the future with tailored fonts, colors and elements.
HEADLINE
INTRO + CONTEXT
DATA VISUAL
PULL QUOTE
VISUAL + COPY
BRANDING
TAILORING FONTS WITH CONSTRAINTS
Probably the most impactful thing I got the chance to do was rebrand each of USA TODAY's brand accounts. While Gannett and USAT had set fonts and guidelines, I worked inside these constraints to come up with three main differentiating fonts for the major sections that are represented on their social platforms. Compared to the normal everyday font we use on the main account, Politics got a refresh with a skinny display serif that reflected the voice of its topics: serious and formal. For Sports I decided a bold sans-serif,
was the best fit for the modern and exhilarating coverage of athletes and games. With Opinion,
a whimsical and less stern version of the Politics font was the optimal choice, because it showcased a more personality/person driven feel.
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INSTAGRAM STORIES
COLOR CODING
THE TAP EXPERIENCE
With the nature of Instagram Stories there isn't much time for us as story promoters to catch the attention of our audience. But some simple changes that become consistent over time, allow for our audiences to make split second connections. At the beginning of 2025, I took over the strategy for USAT's IG stories featuring a simple color coded layout according to the brand colors of each section.
CAROUSELS
THERE'S NOTHING BETTER THAN A SEAMLESS SCROLL
Coming off the success of swipe-able carousels at the LA Times,
I brought over the same idea to USA TODAY's social accounts. With a simple template and guide, editors, writers and more were able to develop more aesthetic packages for Instagram and beyond.
IG stories often are the first line of communication to readers on breaking news topics, other than alerts
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Taylor Swift herself reshared this post I made on a story reviewing her newest album!
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CAROUSELS
One way I get to experiment with design every day is through our longer form "galleries." Sticking to the template I formed, I can make adjustments that allow for variation and "branding" that is special to a singular story or post.
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with a story all about legal trials, the layout was inspired and made to mimic the look of a document with legal pleading
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BREAKING NEWS
HOW TO MAKE IMPACTFUL VISUALS IN UNDER 20 MINUTES
Once a notification comes in through the channels that we'll have breaking news, I first go on a visual hunt to see if we have good pictures or videos, and if not then we'll need to craft something up. Even though I've made a standard breaking template (the left most post) that is simple and good for all use-cases, sometimes we'll want something a bit more visually enticing. This is where speed comes into play, for example with the tariffs post, I had to make a real time decision about if we wanted to go with just a photo of Trump like any other outlet or make something more interesting. Within the span of 20 minutes, I thought out the idea of him sitting on a shipping container and just minutes before sending out the alert, thought it would be fun to have him sitting on top of the world. That post beat our competitors by a mere few minutes.
see how I made this post and more on the USA TODAY Life project page (click here)
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CRAFTING VISUALS
THE ART OF THE PERFECT HED CARD
Sometimes less is more and that couldn't be any truer for our stories that only require a single card to establish all the context. My secret formula for making these cards involves taking keywords and mashing them together visually. For example, with a hed like "Donald Trump is selling $60 bibles," mashing a visual of a bible with Trump's most iconic symbol, the MAGA hat, was a no brainer.
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MOTION
MAKING MOVING PICTURES
Animations are done very sparsely, but incorporating it into the random topics and stories that have minimal given visuals, allows me to enhance the story in a way that's surprising for the audience.
this story was a great chance to utilize motion as well as sound to highlight the topic at hand
it can't get more iconic than ice cream truck music
GRAPHICS
COLLABING WITH THE BEST ILLUSTRATORS IN THE BIZ
Another essential role I serve on the team is prepping and translating USA TODAY's graphics team stories into a mobile format for social. Often times their stories are laid out vertically to conform to the on-site format, but my challenge is taking all their copy and visuals and bringing it to the horizontal scroll of a carousel. This could take on a simple page by page swipe or become more complex with the addition of elements that make the story come alive.
the graphics team never fails to amaze me with how beautiful they can make their illustrations in such a short amount of time
the addition of the lines and dates is a great example of how to narrate the story in a different way than the online vertical version
shoutout to Veronica Bravo for the incredible illustrations!
MULTI-PLATFORM
THANKSGIVING INFLATION SERVED ON A WEB, SOCIAL AND PRINT PLATTER
One of the most exciting and fulfilling parts of news design is seeing your work across multiple different formats. With this story on Thanksgiving dinner costs, I was approached by the graphics team to help create the visual look of the story. This retro vibe with warm colors and heavy grain was so successful that the top editors decided to run it in the nation-wide print issue the next day.
shoutout to Carlie Procell for guiding me through my first-ever Graphics story and my first-ever front page print story
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new style
REBRAND
SHIFTING THE VISUAL VOICE OF OPINION
Like I mentioned in the branding section, I had the awesome opportunity to create a new visual look for so many of USAT's brands, and one that I'm super proud of is Opinion. Before, Opinion was just using the same fonts and look as the main account, but I decided to reformat one of Gannett's fonts to create the one used now. It has a formal feel with the serif type but also a personable look that can "shape shift" based on the variety of topic and writer/pov.
SPECIAL PROJECTS
In 2024 alone, so many news-worthy events took place, which allowed for individual visual brands to develop. This includes the 2024 U.S. presidential election, along with the 2024 Olympics.
ELECTIONS 2024
2024 OLYMPICS
WOMEN OF THE YEAR
go to my page on USA TODAY Politics to see designs from the whole 2024 election season
WOMEN OF THE YEAR
"Women of the Year" is Gannett's annual list of the most influential and inspiring women in a variety of careers and industries.
ELECTIONS 2024
Elections 2024 served as the birth of the USAT Politics rebrand that is used now.
My new visual guide was used across all of the Gannett network at over 400 papers.
go to my page on USA TODAY Sports to see how I covered the 2024 Paris Olympics
2024 PARIS OLYMPICS
During the 2024 Olympics, USAT had a list of "athletes to watch," for this, I created motion graphics and animations to enhance the stories.
SECTIONS
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USA TODAY POLITICS
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USA TODAY SPORTS
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click on a section to dive deeper into some of my favorite projects
USA TODAY LIFE & ENTERTAINMENT
USA TODAY OPINION
USA TODAY TRAVEL
Alongside my daily production of posts for the USAT main account, I also routinely get pitched work for other sections like Sports, Politics, Life and more.
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