PULSE Newsletter

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CLIENT 

Harvard Medical School

ROLE

Design director, lead designer & project manager

Harvard Medical School (HMS) was in a great need of a visual refresh to make their bi-annual newsletter more contemporary-looking and engaging to their readers. No more edge-to-edge copy-filled pages, no more rectilinear maroon blocks, and no more teeny tiny images!

As the lead designer, I came up with a new system that introduces white space, allows for broken grids, uses unexpected large, condensed, all-caps typography, features bold and bright colors, as well as interlocks circular shapes in a dynamic fashion. 

As the design director, I oversaw the production work of my colleagues as they assisted with the laying out of additional issues. 

The results: a strikingly substantial departure from where HMS ever was in the past!

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FUN WITH SCIENTIFIC IMAGES

HMS provides  amazing images that add a lot of punch and visual interest to every issue. For example, the colorized scanning electron micrograph above is showing an apoptotic cell (green) heavily infected with SARS-CoV-2 particles (yellow).

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FUN WITH COLOR

Instead of having a set of defined colors to work with, I have the flexibility to choose a new palette for each issue.

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FUN WITH CIRCLES

Having a client choose a design of mine with circles was a big win for me as I intentionally pushed myself out of my “rectilinear” comfort zone. While circles are definitely more challenging shapes to work with, when used thoughtfully in a composition / layout, the results are dynamically dazzling!

SAMAR IBRAHIM  /  samar.r.ibrahim@gmail.com  /  LinkedIn