Newspaper + Museum = Newseum

Let's talk about the Newseum.

Every night before they leave their shifts, front page designers of member newspapers submit that paper's front page to the Newseum. Then the front page is posted the next day in an exhibit called Today's Front Pages. Hundreds of newspapers from all over the world submit front pages, and they are available for easy viewing access. Also, the actual museum in Washington D.C. displays a couple hundred front pages of different newspapers every day.

Front pages from when Hurricane Katrina hit, from when Obama won the presidency and from Sept. 12, 2001 are archived and available to view online or in person at the museum. There are also exhibits depicting the history of news as well as the future of news. But for designers, the best part are the front pages.

Need inspiration? Check your favorite papers daily to see how they're showing their information to the public. Want to just marvel at good design? All the time, writers say you can't be a good writer until you're a good reader, well, this is reading for designers. You can't be a good designer until you see the good, bad and ugly ideas fleshed out on an actual newspaper. Want to feel good about yourself? The Newseum picks its top 10 front pages every day from the crop it gets each night. I know people who have designed one of those top 10. It's an ego boost for sure.

But whatever your reasons, check it out.

Design: From Start to Finish

Watch closely and witness the design process. Soon newspapers will just post everything to the Web, so it's important to document how it used to be done in the "good ol' days."

The BG News
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
Production of Thursday's issue

Headlines for a Web Audience

In my crony's previous post, she wrote about catchy or punchy art heads (I spell it with the a), and how designers can blow them up big and play with typography in the absence of photos or a better idea.

Soon, though, art heads will be no more.

Since this blog is technically about all the things that will die when newspapers do, I figured I'd spend a moment to talk about Web headlines. Yes, they are different from newspaper headlines.

On a typical front page, for example, The BG News front page on Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010, the centerpiece is graced with a punny art head: "University rakes in new students." A few, short words get the point across, and the story is further explained by the deck head below.

But this same story might have a revised headline for the Web, something like: "Bowling Green State University rakes in new students for Fall Preview Day." This is a fine headline, but there are now more words, making it less eye-catching and more cumbersome to say.

These headlines get changed for something called search-engine optimization. Newspapers want readers to find their websites, so they plug headlines with as many specific words as possible. When the headline just said "University," not many people would find that story through a search, because there are a lot of universities. But there is only one Bowling Green State University.

Gene Weingarten, a pulitzer-prize winning journalist at The Washington Post, wrote a column about this very phenomenon. His point was that newspaper headlines were losing their original magic when being revised for online readers.

But every once in a while, readers can still stumble across something like this.

Headlines aren't dead yet.

Gannett Revamp

Gannett Co., Inc., one of the largest publishers of newspapers in the country, will be taking its publications where no newspapers have gone before — streamlined design.
The newspaper power house, which owns 81 papers including USA Today, the Arizona Republic and the Indianapolis Star, will be moving in-house page designers to their own "studios" in five spread-out locations. These five design studios will layout pages for multiple papers daily.

The impact: design will be consolidated, many designers will be out of jobs and the process will go from designers working on a newspaper's team to being completely separate from the story process as the company attempts to save money.

The good news? Gannett promises all 81 papers will not look the same (although they will have many similar features). Riiiight.

As a former page designer and current newspaper editor, I have it on good authority that creativity can come in short supply at times. If I were expected to design pages for even 10 newspapers, I think I would start to repeat at some point. And begin working on autopilot. (Don't worry. I won't be applying for one of the jobs.)

Another kicker — many Gannett employees found out about the consolidation through rumors and a leaked blog post. Days later, they were officially contacted by the publisher. Oops.

So what does this mean for news design? Will all multi-paper publishers pick up this tactic? Will this method actually save the company enough dollars to make a difference? Or will this just produce cookie-cutter pages from burned-out designers with no connection to the reporters?

The switch is not set to begin for another year or so — the timing will not be the same for each hub. So the impact will not be immediately known. Guess we'll have to see.

It's all in your art hed

We often think of news design as the photos, layout or graphics on a page. But headlines are quintessential to successfully-conveyed stories — and designers just can't keep their hands off important page elements.

Designers don't always write the headlines (though some of the more talented visual journalists will). But their manipulation of text and use of typography, known as an art hed, can make or break the presentation of a story.

Take this page from today's Muncie Star Press in Muncie, Ind. The story is somewhat interesting — construction on the state's wind farm has been delayed. But the photo doesn't have any action; it is just a house. The real art of this stunning centerpiece is the title, "Taking the wind out of their sails."

A designer managed to make me look at a story I may have otherwise blown by. Honestly, the only reason I even looked at this paper was because the art hed got my attention.

But with power comes great responsibility. Art heds have the vast potential to go awry.

Here is a news infographic found on a News Page Designer portfolio. The stories discuss political platforms and agendas of several candidates. But the design does not tell you that. In fact, the art hed gives no clue as to what the stories entail. The poor art hed, combined with the graphic behind the text, produces a confusing page. The message has been muffled. Thus the design has failed its objective.

Let good content sell itself

If simple design is good enough for the man upstairs, then it should be good enough for everyone. God didn't add a bunch of factboxes or photos or graphics when designing the Ten Commandments — He let the content speak for itself. And it has, for thousands of years.

Stop putting so much pressure on yourself.

Good design doesn't have to be flashy or spectacularly clever. It just has to be clean and focused, with a clear path for readers' eyes through stories and photos.

If design gets too clogged with big, script headlines and a whirlwind of colors and shapes, readers could get distracted from the very story the newspaper is trying to sell. Which is the last thing anyone wants. It doesn't matter if flashy design gets someone to pick up a newspaper, if that same design is too convoluted and there's too much stuff for the reader to comprehend, they will quit reading, and the designer will be a failure.

One of the biggest, and hardest lessons for designers to learn is to let good content stand alone. A mantra of design is to design, and then take away everything that is not the design. Or, in less vague terms, take away everything that doesn't help to tell the story.

If the centerpiece photo is great, make it huge and leave it be. If all you have is a catchy headline, mess with the font, but don't add a bunch of nonsense. Words caught readers' attention one hundred years ago; I think they still have that power, no matter what j-schools are teaching these days.

A History of News Design, Part 2

A history of news design is, essentially, a history of news. For important, historic events, it has often been said that newspapers are the first rough draft of history.

Design is how that rough draft is presented to the world. Check out these newspapers and see how they present/preserve one historic event.