The Stranger’s 2019 Back To School Issue

September 25, 2019

Roles: Art Director, Editorial Designer

Contributors: James Olstein, Illustration

Every year, The Stranger provides Seattle with a cheeky guide to going back to school which is chock full of tips, tricks, and advice from those in the know. Stranger writers work feverishly to get this guide out to readers every fall, which can include several individual feature pieces, and it’s my job to put it all together in a way will appeal to readers and tie the feature package together.

For the 2019 Back to School issue, I hired James Olstein, who is an extremely talented and versatile illustrator based out of Philly. As a cohesive unit, I felt that making the guide resemble a playful back-pocket handbook would be fun and visually striking. So, after reading drafts of the features, I had to come up with ideas for the ten illustrations we would need, select a color palette, and send everything off to the illustrator to get started.

After working with James on the illustrations over the course about a week, and the features had gone through the first round of edits, I had a few days to lay out all of the features and create an opening page, which you can see to the right.

Scroll down to see more Back to School layouts, and the rest of James’s illustrative work!