  Training Editors in the Evils of Page Design ADDING A FEW MACS WON'T NECESSARILY DELIVER GREAT DESIGN - BUT TRAINING COPY EDITORS TO AVOID PERILS AND PITFALLS WILL. | |||
 Information from this article was condensed and adapted from materials previously prepared for The Poynter Institute, and available in greater detail under the title "Training the Trainers," on the Poynter web site. Home page: www.ronreason.com (more tips on newspaper design, graphics and editing). |
By Ron Reason Commissioned for, and reprinted from, the April 2000 issue of "The American Editor," the journal of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Not to be republished without permission or recirculated without attribution. As a J-school grad who was undecided whether to pursue
design or editing
as the focus of my newspaper career, I was steered toward the St.
Petersburg Times as a place where young journalists could "do it
all."
There I found a newsroom where Nelson Poynter and editors who followed
strongly believed that the copy desk, rather than "artists," should be
laying out the bulk of the paper.
During my 10 year employ, I watched and learned as copy editors often
struggled to make enterprise news packages, feature pages, project
stories and supplements look "special." For the average news page, the
staff usually did great, but anything out of the ordinary threatened to
trip us up. With one eye on the SND award annual and another on the
mouse, we copy editors often stretched our creative wings in ways, I
eventually realized, that didn't fit the paper's larger mission, and
didn't necessarily serve the reader.
Later as an educator and now as a manager of my own design staff, I've
learned this is a common challenge at many newspapers - getting quality
design work out of copy editors and other journalists who may not have
the training, or supervision, to live up to the task.
Why the struggle? Here are four contributing factors:INADEQUATE TRAINING IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
While some like to think a Macintosh filled with typefaces is the ticket
to good design, the truth is the Mac is just a tool, and mastery of its
use does not equate to talent in graphic design. Most of us trained in
journalism just weren't exposed to the learning and discipline necessary
to master the craft of graphic design. This includes the copy chiefs or
news editors who may be giving final review to layouts in your newsroom
(if anyone is at all).
While most journalists can master the basics of layout, the fine points
of typographic display, color use, and advanced art direction are
another matter entirely. These skills come into play when producing
feature pages or, heaven forbid, a redesign. Though a select few
journalists seem to have natural talent in visual matters, these areas
are really the domain of the trained graphic artist. (Conversely, these
artistes may have a hard time deciphering the journalistic mission of
some of the pages they are assigned, so they have their own learning
curve to master.)
What does this mean for a paper like the St. Pete Times, where 95% of
the page layout, including features and special projects, is done by the
copy desk? Simply that it's important to recognize the need for adequate
training and supervision of copy editors from whom stellar design is
expected. Ultimately, this conversation led to the implementation of the
position I last held at the paper, as design editor. With that role in
place, one-on-one training and group workshops on typography, color use,
and creativity became part of the culture.LACK OF A STYLEBOOK OR AN UNDERSTOOD SET OF DESIGN STANDARDS
Though the St. Pete Times seemed fairly consistent overall, there was
enough "wiggle room" in the selection of fonts and colors and logo
styles to make design management an ongoing challenge. I came to realize
that any area of the design of a newspaper that is subject to
interpretation is an open door to disagreement, maverick design habits,
and ultimately, wasted time and energy.
Consistency should be a design priority for any newspaper. If you don't
have a stylebook, commit the time and resources needed to produce one,
to weed out inconsistencies and minimize options. There's very little
reason for the business section to have a different headline typeface
than the news pages, or for the opinion pages to have a different byline
style than the food section. Streamline styles and eliminate personal
whims from your equation and you'll buy back time to address the things
that really matter - writing better headlines, cropping photos more
effectively, planning more effective illustrations.
A problem for many papers is the issue of "art heads," those display
headlines for feature pages or special sections that depart from the
newspaper's standard. As one of the few things over which the page
designer has total control, these are often seen as the copy editor's
"play things."
In my years of supervising display headlines at St. Pete and since
then, in seminars and at newspapers I've redesigned, I've seen an
outrageous variety of headline displays that do nothing but stroke the
ego of the designer and put his fingerprints on the page. Shadowed type,
unusual color combinations, fonts that seem to have dropped out of outer
space - all are plague on the nation's feature pages and all are
symptoms of an inconsistent, unprofessional approach to design.
This doesn't mean there should be no options for special head displays -
even The Wall Street Journal uses stylized type for special supplements
- but options for typefaces, sizes, colors and other elements of
contrast should be limited, and supervised by someone who has mastered
their use. If there is a desire to build more creativity into the copy
editor's work day, consider involving her earlier in the planning and
conceptualizing of photos, illustrations, graphics and the wording of
headlines. Those should be the true creative emphasis on each page, not
the colors or special effects used on the typefaces.INADEQUATE, ONGOING SUPERVISION OF DESIGN WORK
It's hard to imagine the editor who would allow his City Hall reporter
to sit down and interview the mayor, come back to the newsroom, type up
her notes and hit the "typeset" button, putting the story into the paper
directly, unsupervised. But the equivalent happens in many newsrooms
when it comes to the work of page designers. Often, no qualified
supervisor reviews the work of the designer before it gets into the
paper, in the way a city editor would edit the interview with the mayor,
suggesting tweaks and improvements along the way.
Everyone's work in the newspaper deserves a "second eye." This is how
our best work gets to the reader and how staffers grow as journalists
and designers. However, having the copy chief give the OK to a page
layout may not cut it; often, the copy chief or news editor has been
promoted to that job because of his strong news judgment, not
necessarily because of his visual eye or creativity, so the position of
authority does not guarantee adequate comment on page design work.
Make sure the people assigning, supervising, and signing off on your
page designs are qualified to articulate the success or failure of the
copy editor's work, and to make necessary revisions before publication,
not after. These staffers also may need training in design as well as
management strategies to accomplish this.CONFLICTING GOALS
Often the struggle to get quality design from the copy desk results from
conflicting goals, from various camps in the newsroom. The copy editor
wants to have fun with her job; scrolling through dozens of typefaces in
the Mac, and selecting and fashioning them into an "art head," is very
possibly the most fun part of her day. If someone else has selected the
stories for the page, and possibly the photos or graphics, the design is
one area where the copy editor can really make her mark. Unfortunately,
this may conflict with the goal of the photo editor, which may be to
tell the story in the most clean, direct way - not with a headline
reversed into a photo. It may also conflict with the publisher's goal of
a consistent, reliable design for the paper from front to back - not to
have lots of little visual "surprises" along the way.
This requires an open and honest discussion about what is valued from
the copy editor who designs pages. Does the paper really benefit from
the "flair" that a copy editor may be trying to introduce (possibly by
blindly emulating award-winning pages in the SND annual)? Or is a better
priority the clean, direct page that allows the reader to get in and out
as quickly as possible, telling the story in a no-frills way?
Newsroom managers themselves may cause other kinds of conflicts. Often
I've seen section editors ask a copy editor or artist to make some
aspect of their slice of the news report look "special." Maybe they feel
the nameplate of their section needs to be "jazzed up," or a logo for a
new column has to be created that isn't like anything else in the paper,
or a new set of colors should make their page stand out from the crowd.
Almost always, this results in a discordant, unprofessional feel to the
overall product. I call this phenomenon "turf wars," where the section
editor tries to carve out his niche by creating his own "paper within a
paper." He may see this as the road to advancement, but it's the top
editor's challenge to rein him in.
Yes, there is a need for various parts of the paper to feel "special,"
but almost always, I feel this can be accomplished by publishing
"special" story ideas, photographs, headlines and graphics in styles
that conform to the rest of the paper. Their content and meaning - not
presentation - should stand out. HOW TO GET BETTER
All of the above sets the stage for understanding the motivations of
managers and page designers in newsrooms where struggles exist. But how
do we get beyond these conflicts? A starting point is recognizing that
page design needs to be managed, and empowering and training one or more
supervisors to adequately review design work (in advance, not after
publication, please).
Following are a number of questions that those reviewing page layouts
should ask along the way:
1) Do the design elements help tell the story?
2) Are all elements of the package accurate, relevant, and
appropriate?
3) Do the visuals complement the text in a smart way?
4) Is any design element unnecessary to the layout, and to the conveying
of the story to the reader? Be honest. Be critical. "I don't know why it
works, I just like it" isn't a good enough reason for including a design
element. Boxes, dotted rules, color on type - if any element can be
stripped away without diminishing the story, remove it.
5) Is the scale of every element correct? Are the proportions
appropriate? Do the right words and art elements and colors speak to the
reader?
6) If the page doesn't seem to be clicking, what's missing? Is there
another element - photo, illustration, headline - that would tell the
story better? If so, how do we get it in the paper?
7) If the page doesn't seem to be clicking, what went wrong? Was the
copy editor involved in the early planning of the visuals, or was the
package dumped on him at the last minute? If so, what can we do next
time to involve him earlier? © 2000, Ron Reason, design@ronreason.com. Not to be republished without attribution. Back to top of page |
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Posted: April 20, 2000. design@ronreason.com
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