28 PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY
Sara Green is the woman behind the paper, almost literally. Green is the art director at the Philadelphia Weekly, a free alternative paper in the city. She “directs” one assistant on editorial layout, plus two photographers and does the rest herself—and all within a one-week deadline!

Her inspiration is sometimes hard for an outsider to comprehend, but the feature titled “Shelf Life” fell together quickly. Green explains, “In this story, there were two central elements: the existence of this supermarket and its diversity in [the context of] the neighborhood in which it’s located. I happen to live in the neighborhood … and am especially in love with its diversity, and I think I wanted to try to keep that element in the cover design, as it is personally important to me. The photographer from the paper had taken photos of well-stocked aisles and different kinds of international items about which the writer had written. Unlike most weeks, the idea for this cover came to me instantly after seeing the aisles in his photos.” Green responds cleverly to issues of diversity in this pairing of a vibrant cover image with understated type, itself resting on the shelves next to the goods. “Good design, to me, is something that communicates all of the facets of a message clearly and concisely, and is simultaneously beautiful and intriguing,” she states. by Jiwon Kim & Alyson Beaton