When newspapers die...

...where will designers go?

Each newspaper has, we're going to estimate, anywhere from one to nine designers working each night. On average. There are a bit more than 1,000 daily newspapers in the United States.

Do the math with me.

1 X 1,000 = 1,000
9 X 1,000 = 9,000

Plus a few extra. So anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 will be out of work. (But I will be the first to admit my shortcomings: my math is probably off. We'll just say millions.)

Imagine millions of good, bad and mediocre designers on the job hunt once the paper business folds. Where can they find work? Here are a few options.

1. Dairy Queen
I don't mean former news designers to soft-serve tasty treats to drunk college students at midnight. I want designers to redo the blizzard cup. I went to Dairy Queen a few days ago and I left unsettled with how the blizzard cups look. There is no consistency with the use of logos on the list of possible flavors. Some logos, such as Oreo, is in trademarked font, while some are not. And Oreo is only in trademarked font once. Consistency!

2. Marina and the Diamonds
Marina is a British music star. But she needs help with how to arrange the songs on her albums. Any competent individual would realize that "I Am Not A Robot" should have opened her album, "The Famly Jewels." We need some solid ideas to redesign this mess.

3. Book-cover Industry
I'm going to go ahead and plug my friend's blog about book covers. It might actually be kind of a good idea, though, for former page designers to get into designing book covers. Much the same thought goes into both jobs: both designs attempt to grab people's attention to read the content inside.

So have no fear! Designers, when your newspaper falls, you have plenty of options still to leave your mark on the world.