Design With Reason

[Santa Fe, NM] In more than 20 years of visits to newsrooms around the world, I’ve seen it all, in terms of work environments - but the typical newsroom is the one you see in the movies, desks stacked with papers, perhaps a hodge-podge of cubicles, maybe cubicles, offices and workflow adapted with a bit of inelegance as the organization has changed through the years. (Photo department? Why they are one floor up, behind the store room, near the morgue …)

So it’s always a refreshing moment when I walk into a newsroom that instantly seems well planned, inviting, and accessible to both the staff and the public. Such was the case when I entered The New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) during a recent week of work.

The newsroom is all the more impressive for being a former printing facility. Redesigned with some expense and considerable imagination by owner Robin Martin and newsroom leaders including Rob Dean and Mike Cosgrove, the place boasts clean and inspiring architectural lines, wonderfully filtered light throughout the day (and pleasing artificial light at night), Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone seems to be forwarding the video of Jacek Utko, speaker at the TED conference, whose website describes him as such: “Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.”

Following is my response to a friend (who works at an ad agency) who forwarded it to me and suggested the video would be good ammo to throw at my potential clients:

“Saw that video last week, it’s interesting but a complex issue. Here in the states, as early as the ’60s The New York Herald-Tribune (now defunct, of course) became known for such ’spectacular’ design, courtesy the legendary art director Peter Palazzo. (Read this gushy tribute by Lou Silverstein, who calls Palazzo’s designs ‘electrifying.’ Of course they were - he used illustrations by a young talent known as Andy Warhol!) The Allentown Morning Call had a reign as a gorgeously designed newspaper in the ’70s. It got a lot of acclaim in design circles, produced many staffers who went on to become design stars in the industry, but obviously it’s poster-brand designs were not enough to save the day, as it long ago reverted to what most would call bland, formulaic designs.

“In recent years, papers like the Virginian-Pilot and San Jose Mercury News have been very innovative and often ‘beautifully designed’ publications. El Mundo in Spain had a long run of black-and-white illustrations that were truly museum-worthy. Many others worldwide joined the “spectacular design” bandwagon in the late ’80s and through the ’90s. Few if any can claim that their designs have spared them the blunt of what the rest of the industry is seeing (i.e., losing money left and right).

“I wonder if the Polish papers described and shown in this video changed their circulation strategy, reduced or eliminated their cover price, had a kick-ass marketing push, or did something else that helped the circulation. Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Mutter shares tips on his “Reflections of a Newsosaur” site about what to do with your furlough if you have been given an involuntary, unpaid leave, as some newspapers are ordering.

While Alan seems to focus on journalism career development (nothing wrong with that), I’d like to offer a few suggestions, which focus more on “life development” and build on my post from a few days ago, regarding how to charge your batteries in a bigger-picture sense. The following cater a bit to visual journalists but could apply to anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

[Chicago] Every day brings new conversations with editors, news designers, photographers and students on the subject: what sort of life, and career, can there be after newspapers? And in this economy? To that end, I posted an entry yesterday questioning how we define ourselves, our lives, our work.

I recently got back in touch with Stacy Sweat (thanks again, Facebook), former associate managing editor in charge of presentation at the Chicago Tribune. Her profile led me to the web site for her graphic design firm, which revealed numerous portfolio samples that set off sparks of inspiration in my brain. (You will want to explore it via the links here - after you finish reading this post.) Just a few months earlier I had admired Stacy’s graphic design work promoting a neighborhood arts open house, which my office participates in. (The promo piece is shown above.) I thought fresh design work such as this, and her transformation from newspaper diva, was worth sharing with blog readers. Stacy was kind enough to answer a few questions, and share some really useful tips for journalists wanting to break away into a career in graphic design. Some of my observations conclude the piece.

Ron: How hard was it for you to say goodbye to newspapers and to take the leap into corporate/graphic design?

Read the rest of this entry »

A visit last week by my college buddy John England (a fine country-western singer and bandleader in Nashville) prompted me to write this post. In our catching-up conversations, somehow this came up: “What would you like your epitaph to be, on your tombstone? Newspaperman?” he asked.

I was a bit taken aback, not so much by his question but by my rejection of the label. Maybe in the ’80s, early ’90s, this might have come to mind. After all, I worked for one daily newspaper then, the St. Pete Times, and it was a logical label, proudly bandied about by the green-eyeshade wearing crowd.

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Just visited seattlepi.com. Intrigued by the question they ask of themselves, “Can Seattle’s oldest newspaper be successfully transformed into a child of the information age?”. Obviously it’s a time of transition, and like everyone, I hope the online-only PI survives, thrives, serves Seattle and the world, and inspires the rest of the industry. But a few observations on the day after the death of the print edition give pause about its immediate health, and prospects for survival, as an online-only entity:

• Only one ad on the home page, just slightly poking above the bottom of my browser on my laptop. (On first visit, ad belonged to the Kaplan testing services - good news for this Washington Post subsidiary, perhaps. When page was refreshed at least another 10 times, the ad changed to a non-paid promo for the PI site’s health page. This ad then appeared repeatedly on all sub-sections. Maybe Kaplan bailed.)
• Went to search how to place an ad online, only to be informed: Read the rest of this entry »

[Coming soon: real-world tips for portfolio presentation and job hunting, from the trenches.]

For the third time in a week I’ve been contacted by former students, designers or clients who are - surprise - in the market for a job, wanting my thoughts on their portfolios. Yep, times are tough. To help out, I’m offering free critiques, of digital portfolios only, for designers who are, or may be, in the job market. This is a limited time offer, but for starters, I’ll commit to review and comment on, via email, the first 10 submissions that might come my way. Read the rest of this entry »

Next weekend I return to campus to serve on the alumni advisory board to the journalism school, so it was great to see this story today, amidst a sea of dire news about the news business, about my alma mater, Indiana University-Bloomington. The upshot: kids still wanna tell stories, even if they aren’t necessarily headed for “news” per se. Reprinted with permission from this week’s Indianapolis Business Journal:

IU journalism school’s enrollment spike bucks slump

By Anthony Schoettle aschoettle@ibj.com

At a time when the field of journalism is shedding thousands of jobs, Indiana University’s journalism department is seeing record growth. The growth is so strong, IU officials said the journalism school will have to abandon its home of the last 65 years for a facility twice its size.What appears to be an anomaly is the result of the school’s repositioning, which started more than three years ago, IU officials said.

“We have made strategic shifts in our curriculum to meet the demands of students and ready them for a changing work field,” said IU Journalism Dean Brad Hamm, who joined the university in 2005.

Enrollment in the undergraduate journalism school in Bloomington has grown from 612 students in 2006 to 873 this year, and Hamm expects continued growth. Read the rest of this entry »

 
Today’s the last day for the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Not much more to say, other than to fondly recall the time many years ago, Read the rest of this entry »