Five Tips for Better Business Section Design IT'S TOUGH, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE, TO DESIGN A GREAT BIZ PAGE. COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION ARE KEY.
If you have a question or comment on these topics, send it to me here at any time. I'll respond as soon as possible, and consider using your question in a future web posting. Home page: www.ronreason.com (more tips on newspaper design, graphics and editing).		By Ron Reason Not to be republished without permission or recirculated without attribution. The following is based on a presentation given at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers convention in Huntington Beach, Calif. Business sections are among the most challenging areas of newspapers or magazines to illustrate, photograph, package and design. News always seems to be on deadline, and when it isn't, topics are often quite abstract and tough to visualize. A key starting point in notching up your business section is collaboration and communication among editors, writers, designers, artists and photographers. The following tips for better business sections are designed for you to print out or distribute via e-mail to your colleagues who work together on the business report. I then suggest gathering to discuss the points and share ideas for working together better. 1. Define your audience. Articulate who you are publishing for, and share with the designers, copy editors, photographers, researchers, and others who contribute to your section. (This audience just might be different on different days. For example, a Monday business tab might be focused on personal finance, while the rest of the week might be speaking to corporate chieftains.) Decide if you want to be a "just the facts" kind of section, or more of a "wow" publication. 2. Look at the process as well as the product. Your pages may need to be jazzier, more colorful, more graphic or just cleaner. But you may also need to revise who does what, when and how. This doesn't necessarily mean you "re-engineer" the staff (in Dilbert-speak), but you could work on issues such as planning, communication, creativity and respect. Open doors for everyone on your staff. Talk about issues such as who has ownership of the visuals in the business section? 3. Anticipate the visual elements of each story, and plan to make them happen. Make sure visual reporting takes place early in the process; make sure reporters bring back visual stuff. Ask yourself on every story, in the early planning stages: "What is the SHOW ME aspect of this story? What would the reader rather be shown than told?" 4. Humanize complex stories. Connect with your readers. Have fun where it's appropriate. For example, a business cover I once designed was on the seemingly dry topic of hospitals marketing their obstetrics programs. An editor brought me a bunch of tear-sheets of ads from these marketing departments, which had already run in our newspaper, for use as "art" on the biz cover. This struck me as boring stuff! After some discussion and a little imagination, we ended up putting a photo of the editor's infant son inside a dollar bill with the headline "BIG BUCKS FOR BABIES" on the cover. This brought the issue closer to home for our readers. 5. Write compelling headlines and make them work with the art. Some of the business magazines do this quite well. Study them and talk about what works well - and what doesn't. They run a lot of clunkers, too, but they are upfront about the challenge of covering issues like money and investment and not wanting to show a dollar bill or coins in every art element they use. (In fact, some business magazines totally forbid the use of currency as visual imagery in their pages.) (Supporting images to come, after I get back from Norway in mid-May!) Do you have suggestions for improving the design and packaging of business sections? Send them to me here and I'll consider adding them to a later revision of this article (with credit, of course!). © 2006, Ron Reason. Illustration by Andrew Skwish. Not to be republished without permission or recirculated without attribution. Back to top of page
Bio/resume | Redesigns | Newsroom Training | Articles and Resources | Home Originally posted: May 1, 1998. Email the author here