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| Kari Schneider glass blowing in the art building | By Jessica Vogt |
Bowling Green State University senior Kari Schneider is an artist.
And every Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to midnight the graphic design major fills newspaper pages with her creativity.
In high school, Schneider tried her hand at several artistic mediums — ceramics, photography, drawing — before finding her niche in typography.
But when a design job opened up at The BG News, BGSU’s daily student newspaper, Schneider jumped at the opportunity.
“It was one of the only campus design jobs I’d heard of before,” she said. “I’ve always had an interest in newspapers, and I was interested to try and make news design more visually interesting.”
But her transition from graphic design to news design was not seamless.
Graphic designers create, choose and organize these elements—typography, images, and the so-called “white space” around them—to communicate a message, according to AIGA, the professional association for design. Graphic design is type and image-based, and requires a different approach and thought process than news design.
“News design is always about the story and following the style guide,” Schneider said. “There is more of a format that is expected. In graphic design, people are always trying to break the rules.”
Schneider’s newspaper spreads also require a different timeline than her art.
Typically, she has approximately three hours to develop and execute a spread. She reads the story, thinks about her approach and designs the centerpiece art, illustration or photo spread.
The rush has its perks, though.
“I like the community atmosphere and the rush for the deadline,” she said. “Sometimes you have to be more creative with what you can do in such a short time. With graphic design, you can overwork an idea and it looks too forced.”
Schneider is not the only graphic designer taking on newspapers.
Portugal’s i newspaper traded its traditional grid spreads for bolder, more beautiful designs featuring work by prominent graphic designers.
"I think the overriding concept, not just in the design but in the newspaper as a whole, is that we want to try to set out to produce a magazine every day," said Nick Mrozowski, i's American art director.
I’s pages, shown below, are custom designed each day, as the designers draw upon their artistic backgrounds.
Schneider finds this cross over between the two forms of design rare.
Many graphic designers who do embrace newspapers ends up crafting editorial cartoons or photo collages, she said. Even Schneider, after developing a deep appreciation and fondness for her newspaper work, prefers more nontraditional and strictly guided design.
And while Schneider’s required course work has prepared her for these visual tasks — a bachelor of fine arts requires 13 art studios and a portfolio review, according to the degree audit — the story-telling aspect of journalism is a new challenge.
“You always have to design not for yourself but for others,” she said. “One big thing about news design is that anyone could be reading it. Your design has to be accessible to anyone, even to people who don’t care about design breaking boundaries.”
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