Getting the Word Out
 A professsional portfolio highlighting graduate-level work samples and skills Alex Fus developed at Ooligan Press while earning her Masters of Arts in Writing: Book Publishing from Portland State University.

Design

Whether in Adobe Creative Suite or in the pages of my own sketchbook, I combine technical skill and expressive style to illustrate the heart of the story.

Whether in Adobe Creative Suite or in the pages of my own sketchbook, I combine technical skill and expressive style to illustrate the heart of the story.

 

PROJECT

I led my project team in generating this design brief to inform and inspire Ooligan's designers with an overview of our goals for the book's cover. These goals outlined our strategy for how the final cover should represent the book's content, engage our target audience, and attract readers' interest.

TASK

I researched covers for comparative titles to survey current market trends. After evaluating these design conventions, I outlined an aesthetic aimed at helping our book fit in and simultaneously stand out within its genre. The design brief I prepared provides a detailed description of the book, cover examples, and a list of specific elements to emulate and avoid. After winning approval from my team, the brief was distributed to all Ooligan Press team members, who each had an opportunity to create and submit a potential cover.

CLIENT

Siblings and Other Disappointments, a short story collection by debut author Kait Heacock and published by Ooligan Press.

SKILLS

Market research, copywriting, design, and layout.


PROJECT

I designed this cover for my special illustrated edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I used my skill in Illustrator to create high-resolution original vector art I composed and laid out in InDesign with coordinating typography to achieve a bold aesthetic that recalls the Queen of Hearts' playing card motif.

TASK

After extensive research comparing the cover designs of historical editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ranging from Carroll’s original 1865 edition to Penguin's recent edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama, I used my knowledge of book design principles and Adobe Creative Suite to design my own illustrated edition.

CLIENT

Professor Abbey Gaterud, WR562 Book Design & Production.

SKILLS

Graphic design in Illustrator, page layout in InDesign, and bibliographic research.


PROJECT

I redesigned Lewis Carroll's text to create my own edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland informed by my study of the conventions of book design, the principles of typography, and historical editions of this beloved children's book. I used my Photoshop and InDesign expertise to illuminate Carroll's content with special textual effects and John Tenniel's original illustrations to bring a new look to the words of Wonderland.

TASK

I XML-tagged Project Gutenberg’s public domain text, which I then imported and mapped to styles and structural elements in InDesign. I maximized the efficiency of my workflow by mapping my tagged XML to linked frames I set up using InDesign’s master pages feature. I also edited Tenniel's original illustrations in Photoshop, eliminated widows and orphans, and styled the text with special effects using InDesign’s typography tools. In my redesigned edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll’s words fall down the rabbit hole with Alice and fade in and out alongside the Cheshire Cat in an exercise in form illustrating content.

CLIENT

Professor Abbey Gaterud, WR562 Book Design & Production.

SKILLS

XML coding, Photoshop, InDesign, typography, layout, and book interior design.


PROJECT

I designed this eight-page magazine spread to demonstrate my mastery of Adobe Creative Suite’s publishing software. I created graphic elements in Illustrator, edited photos in Photoshop, and composed page layout in InDesign.

TASK

My multi-column layout makes efficient use of InDesign's master pages, baseline grid, and text styles to incorporate magazine design elements, including running headers and folios, sidebars and pull quotes, as well as styled headlines, subheads, bylines, and captions. I also created original graphics and retouched all the spread's photos, managing resolution and colorspace appropriately for both print and web.

CLIENT

Professor Kelly Dodd, WR571 Publishing Software.

SKILLS

Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.


PROJECT

I researched the history of ebook design and applied both cutting-edge hypertext theory and conventional book design principals to evaluate ebooks’ new creative possibilities for form and content. My research on designing digital reading takes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a case study because, as new media scholar Florian Cramer argues in The Unbound Book, “Carroll’s novel became the recurring showcase item in electronic literature since it is perhaps the only best-selling, all-popular piece of literary avant-garde and experimental writing in the Western world, a text lending itself to media experiments.” My investigation tracks the development of ebook design from Voyager’s earliest Expanded Books, which first engineered Alice for the Powerbook in 1991, to today’s richly responsive Alice for the iPad to speculate on how the principles of design should inform and inspire developing technology to shape the digital reading of tomorrow.

TASK

I designed this industry research paper to illustrate my findings, illuminating content with form by placing elements of print and digital reading in creative tension. My document design demonstrates my mastery of image handling, text treatment, visual hierarchy, and composition using the Adobe Creative Suite to meet the demands of print production.

CLIENT

Professor Abbey Gaterud, WR562 Book Design & Production.

SKILLS

Industry research, scholarly writing, graphic design in Illustrator, photo editing in Photoshop, page layout and composition in InDesign.


PROJECT

This collection of freelance résumé design projects showcases my personal brand development, copyediting, and document design skills using Adobe Creative Suite. I executed these résumé, cover letter, flyer, sign, and business card designs as freelance projects on behalf of a individual clients and a local small business to develop marketing materials that effectively communicated a strong brand identity.

TASK

I edited my freelance clients' rough copy for length, parallel structure, active verbs, and search engine optimization (SEO). I then laid out and styled the text in InDesign, created coordinating document templates and collateral, and then incorporated client feedback to develop several design iterations.

CLIENT

Freelance.

SKILLS

Branding, graphic design, photo editing, and page layout in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.


PROJECT

This collection of freelance design projects executed on behalf of a local small business demonstrates my ability to develop marketing materials using Adobe Creative Suite that effectively communicate strong brand identity. 

TASK 

I solicited client feedback to develop several design iterations for flyer, sign, and business cards as branded marketing materials at the direction of a local small business client. 

CLIENT 

Freelance. 

SKILLS 

Branding, graphic design, photo editing, and page layout in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.