Society of News Design Magazine / Issue 116 by adonisdurado

116

SOCIETY FOR NEWS DESIGN SPRING 2018

F I VE I D E AS WORTH STE AL I NG / 7

5O WAYS TO F U T U R E- P RO O F YO U R CAR E E R / 12

MI D - CAR E E R ADVI CE FOR VI SUAL JOUR NAL I STS / 22

W H AT W I L L BE YO U R I N NOVATI ON JOUR NE Y ? / 24

COVERS WE HATE TO LOVE (OR LOVE TO HATE)

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDEES 2018

A CALL FOR SOLIDARITY TO FREE FEVZI YACIZI

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

Design Journal No. 116 Spring 2018 / ISSN 1520-4243 SND Publication Director Adonis Durado School of Visual Communication Ohio University, Athens, Ohio adonisdurado@gmail.com Design Journal is published by the Society for News Design. We encourage readers to submit articles, illustrations and pages. Some material may be edited for space. We’re okay with reasonable copying of information from this publication for educational purposes only. Opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect those in the Society or its officers. Founded in 1979, SND is an international organization for news media professionals and visual communicators. Members art direct, design, edit, report, make photo/video, and visualize data. SND hosts an annual The Best of News Design competitions open to newspapers, magazines, and websites from around the world, and conducts a yearly conference that brings in national and international visual journalists. Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Lee Steel, Cristóbal Edwards, and our contributors!

CONTENTS R EGUL A R S 4 Message: The Immediate Past President 5 Message: The President 6 This issue’s type 48 Column: Roger Black 51 Parting shot

F EATURES

10 Ideas worth stealing 12 50 ways to future-proof your career 22 Mid-career advice for visual journalists 24 What will be your innovation journey? 26 Covers we hate to love (or love to hate) 32 A virtual space for young visual journalists 34 One world. One SND. 36 SND Lifetime Achievement Awardees: Janet Froelich and John Grimwade 43 Obituary: Miguel Urabayen 50 SND’s call for solidarity

M U ST S E E

WEB CRAWLER

WHAT YOU MISSED+WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW+ WHAT EVERYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT OR DEBATING

WWW.SND.ORG / DESIGN JOURNAL

E D I TO R’ S N OT E

PHOTO: Kaitlin Owens

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors

Adonis Durado

is the Knight Fellow for Master in Visual Communication Management at Ohio University. He was the Design Director and Chief Creative Officer of Muscat Media Group, publisher of the Times of Oman and Al Shabiba. During his tenure, the company became one of the most awarded media organizations in the Middle East, winning more than 500 international awards.

I’m still learning,” Michelangelo said in 1562. At that time, he was 87 years old. This quote is pretty inspiring. Imagine the weight of that statement coming from the man considered as the greatest artist of all time. Humans are perpetually curious, continuously searching, aren’t we? And that learning for us is a lifetime endeavor. That’s what life is all about, if you really think of it. But I just learned recently that the statement was actually a misattribution to Michelangelo. The original Italian text “Ancora imparo” was found to have been inscribed in a drawing by a lesser-known Italian artist. And in 1806, a British author who wrote Michelangelo’s biography mistakenly attributed the said artwork to the Italian master. Thus began the copying of spurious quotation which has become one of Michelangelo’s most shared memes on the internet today. Anyhow, that’s one good lesson about learning. It’s realizing that what you know today may one day change or get challenged. Or even get debunked. Or become obsolete. And this is somewhat the overarching theme in this issue of SND Design Journal. We have devoted story packages that talk about our career as visual journalists in the age when new technologies are challenging our industry. With a new medium of storytelling comes a new demand for different skills. Was it not a while ago when we were all getting excited about the prospect of doing a tablet edition? Now, that conversation seems to have dissipated. Augmented reality and virtual reality (or mixed reality!) are the current buzz words. The task of learning, in whatever forms, seems daunting for many. It may require not just time and money but a shitload of mental stamina. That’s why in this issue, we hope to help you chart your course. We gather here some life hacks to calm you down from the sea of anxieties while navigating your career path. So pick up what you think are essentials!

SND OF FICER S

PRESIDENT Tyson Evans Editor for Newsroom Strategy The New York Times tysone@mac.com VICE PRESIDENT Paige Connor Product Manager CQ Roll Call pkconnor34@yahoo.com SECRETARY/TREASURER Alyson Morris Features Designer Chicago Tribune alyson.m.morris@gmail.com IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT Douglas Okasaki Senior Designer Gulf News dokasaki@gulfnews.com SND FOUNDATION PRESIDENT Tracy Collins Director Phoenix Design Studio at Gannett tacollins@gannett.com SND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Stephen Komives Society for News Design 424 E. Central Blvd. Suite 406 Orlando, FL 32801 skomives@snd.org

REGIONAL DIRECTORS REGION 1 U.S. AND CANADA Kyle Ellis Consultant American City Business Journals

DESIGNING NEWS AND THE POWER OF JOURNALISM DURATION: 5:43 minutes

bit.ly/2I0Fevk

FIRST VIDEO: How do you unpack stories in the most engaging way while building a credible and comprehensive brand? SECOND VIDEO: What’s the future of media? A look into the art of original reporting and why we devour stories in different ways.

Scan or type the short URL

DURATION: 5:16 minutes

bit.ly/2oSWlGW

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

REGION 11 — MEXICO & CENTRAL AMERICA Alexandro Medrano Innovation & Strategic Planning Director Grupo Imagen REGION 12 — SOUTH AMERICA Gustavo Lo Valvo Design Director Bureau de Diseño Editorial REGION 13 — SCANDINAVIA Fleming Hvidtfeldt Journalist BLM, Berlingske Media REGION 14 — MEDITERRANEAN Javier Errea Principal Javier Errea Comunicación REGION 16 — SND/DACH Sven Gallinelli Art Director NZZ Regionalmedien REGION 17 — RUSSIA Fyodor Shumilov Founder Parovoz Infographic Studio REGION 18 — SND/FRANCE Melina Zerbib Digital Design Director Le Monde REGION 19 — ASIA & SOUTH-PACIFIC Darren Long Head of Graphics and Magazine Design South China Morning Post REGION 20 — MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA Osama Aljawish Senior Designer Al Shabiba REGION 21 — SND CHINESE Tian Chi Design Editor China Daily

M ES SAG E / T H E I M M E DI AT E PAST P R E S I DE NT

Douglas Okasaki

The power of volunteerism

ith our busy schedules, volunteerism has become very difficult and a rare asset. Why would people spend precious time volunteering for a non-profit? Simple. You believe that you are working and donating your time and efforts for a good cause. That feeling is priceless. My association with SND has been a longterm relationship… it started in 1995 when I received my first Award of Excellence (AOE) in the SND competition. That same year I participated in my first SND workshop in Barcelona, the first workshop held in Europe. At that time, each winner was handed a certificate in person for any award, be it Gold, Silver or AOE. I was so happy to be there and received the award from competition coordinator Kelly Frankeny and then SND president Deborah Withey. That award made a huge difference in my professional life. A great moment in my life that sealed the SND ties with me forever. It was like love at first sight. Volunteerism can boost your confidence in many ways. It presents opportunities you would not get in your design department as a designer. It’s a combination of entrepreneurship and challenges; where you can develop some hidden skills—to be an event organizer, marketer, social media expert, writer, producer, and so on.

If SND were not meaningful and relevant, it would not have endured this long. Last year, as SND president, my fondest memory was to experience the power of SND to connect worldwide. Whatever you need, someone in other part of the world is willing to assist you. This characteristic separates SND from other organizations. We are now in our 40th year. If SND were not meaningful and relevant, it would not have endured this long. Still, there are plenty of things for the Society to do. I found inner peace in my professional life and felt a secure place to be in SND. You can have this amazing experience, too! You are welcome to join us, volunteer, and contribute in many ways to our Society. For more than a decade, Douglas Okasaki has served as a senior designer for Gulf News in Dubai, UAE.

CO NTROVER SY

THE CASE OF USING STOCK PHOTOS In February, The Poynter Institute published an article offering tips to online editors who regularly experience the problem of posting an online story without visuals. The proposed solution? Use free stock images. And this stirred up a hornet’s nest. The associations of photographers were up in arms condemning the article for undermining the work and value of the photographers. In a separate post, Poynter President Neil Brown defended the story stating that text needs imagery to exist on the modern web and that this predicament is frequently happening in the newsrooms or among the small teams of producers.

READ THE ORIGINAL STORY

bit.ly/2nPfARX

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ME SSAGE / THE PRES I D EN T

Tyson Evans

BEST OF NEWS DESIGN PRINT COMPETITION Josh Crutchmer Design and Graphics Editor The Plain Dealer

SND turns 40

appy anniversary to the Society! What an incredible 40-year journey. SND has remained an essential and positive force for excellence and creativity through decades of tumult and transformation in the news industry. Now we find ourselves at an incredible inflection point. The boundaries between industries, disciplines, and technologies have never been blurrier—or more ripe for invention. The very definition of a media company is changing and, along with it, the job of designers. The turbulence can be unsettling, but it’s also profoundly exciting. Visual journalists can reach more people and engage them with richer experiences and products than ever before. I hope you’re reading this note at the annual Workshop, which is here in New York City for the first time since 1982. We have tried to build an event that reflects the future of SND while still honoring our past, our traditions and the timeless aspects of great design and visual journalism. We have speakers and attendees from news organizations that have existed for a century or more mingling alongside designers, developers and editors from digital upstarts, technology companies and organizations in their infancy. I love SND for two reasons: First, because it’s one of the only organiza-

tions that convenes such a dizzying spectrum of passions in the same space. Whether you’re obsessed about data visualization, mapping, multimedia storytelling—or passionate about how design thinking can build better systems, strategies and smarter ways of discovering, interacting with and paying for quality journalism—the Society should be a crucial part of your professional life. Secondly, SND is like a family—the organization played a critical role launching or shaping many of our careers, but many of us have a deep personal connection to the people here. It’s important we find ways to expand that sense of family at a time of upheaval. I hope everyone can find ways SND can be valuable, both professionally and personally. What do we need from you? Although it’s an exciting time for SND, it’s also a perilous time. Much like the media companies that employ us (or used to employ us) our traditional model has broken down. We’re in search of how to make sure the Society remains essential for the next 40 years. We need your ideas, your enthusiasm, and your support. Please reach out to me or any of the officers if you’d like to play a bigger role in shaping SND’s future.

COMPETITION COORDINATOR (39TH EDITION) Chris Rukan Art Director The Washington Post ANNUAL BOOK Steve Layton Lecturer University of Indiana BEST OF DIGITAL DESIGN COMPETITION Ryan Sparrow Instructor Ball State University INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Cristóbal Edwards Professor Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s School of Journalism TRAINING Chris Courtney Director Bloc TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR Miranda Mulligan Digital Specialist Washington D.C. and Miwaukee, WI DESIGN DIRECTOR Jon Wile Creative Director American City Business Journals

Tyson Evans is a senior editor for Opinion product and strategy at The New York Times.

In a joint statement, the National Press Photographers, the Associated Press Photo Managers, and The Kalish Visual Editing Workshop echoed this concern: “To understand how damaging this practice can be, please consider: Photos are sometimes offered for free by those who don’t have the legal right to distribute them. This has snared plenty of news organizations. The most dramatic example was when trusted wire services were found liable for copyright infringement to the tune of $1.2 million for distributing photos without permission. This can and does happen in stock photo and Creative Commons sites, too.”

OUTREACH DIRECTOR Aviva Loeb Digital Designer The Washington Post SND.ORG EDITOR Greicy Mella Designer New York Daily News

VISUAL JOURNALISTS WEIGH IN SUE MORROW STAN ALOST READ THE STATEMENT

bit.ly/2H3IJ2L

The Sacramento Bee

Ohio University

“Instead of bashing Poynter’s recent article, let’s use this as an opportunity to create a more efficient and productive process to make visual editing part of the workflow instead of a last-minute engine search.”

“The danger is when we think (or teach) that visuals illustrate a story rather than how they add information and are part of the story— another element of the story.”

FULL STORY: bit.ly/2CNOqQ3

FULL STORY: bit.ly/2CQA3u9

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

THIS ISSUE’S TYPE SND.ORG CONTRIBUTOR Todd Johnson Visual journalist The San Francisco Business Times EDUCATION DIRECTOR: US Darren A. Sanefski Assistant Professor The Meek School of Journalism and New Media EDUCATION DIRECTOR: NON-U.S. Michael Stoll Professor Augsburg University of Applied Sciences DIVERSITY DIRECTOR Ramla Mahmood Designer Vox Media

INVITE YOUR FRIENDS TO BE A MEMBER AND GET THESE PERKS: A discount on the SND Annual Workshop & Exhibition—three days of inspiration and networking with people from all over the world. *** Discounts on regional Quick Courses which cover a wide range of topics. *** Automatic invitations to participate in the annual Best of Newspaper Design Competition and opportunities to serve as a judge or facilitator. *** A copy of the SND annual book with images of the winning entries and judges’ comments. *** Opportunities for portfolio reviews and mentoring from SND colleagues. *** Opportunities to network with journalists and designers from around the world. *** And the amazing Design Journal!

WWW.FREREJONES.COM

T E XT:

Tobias Frere-Jones

AB C

Mallory

began as a selfinitiated project, based on decades of interaction with type users. Creating type palettes is a difficult but critical task for any designer, but editorial designers in particular. I built Mallory with a mix of organic (humanist) and geometric elements, so it could readily pair with other typefaces, taking the lead or supporting roles equally well. I believe that the best typefaces have a conscious lineage, a deliberate relationship to what has come before—both in type history and the wider cultural history. This family began as an experiment in blending typographic traditions. I wanted to make a new design that had the classical austerity that runs through much of British typography, as well as the gregarious energy that is a longstanding trait of the American type.

Exchange

is centered on efficiency and durability. The redesign of The Wall Street Journal called for a narrower page, and I worked with the Journal’s designers to create a brief for a new text type. Simply condensing the letters would distort them too much, tiring the reader and degrading legibility. Exchange was conceived as a narrow typeface from the start, rather than being altered from some other proportion. Its strategy relies on an unorthodox set of historical references. The coherence of the overall word shape, the first step in legible text, takes a lesson from the early Ionic style of slab serifs from 19th Century Britain. Clearly distinguishable letters, another key element for the reader, learn from Bell Gothic, made in America during the era of Great Depression. The deep notches and amplified details anticipate the interaction of ink and paper on the press.

Fulton

is an in-progress family, making its first public appearance here in this magazine. Geometric slab serifs first appeared in the early and mid-19th century, gritty and forceful. As type founders explored this new genre, some experimented with structures, assembling block-like serifs and extra heavy strokes on a geometric frame. Fulton looks back to these first models as a guide, to make a family with a commanding presence as well as the range that editorial designers need. Its long, insistent serifs make a kind of cousin to typewriter designs, which lend the text a factual, unadorned quality. Geometry is usually used to establish order and create a sense of stillness. Fulton instead uses geometry to present energy as well as order—to be loud even in its lightest weights.

WWW.SND.ORG / DESIGN JOURNAL

stealing

ideas worth

Future. Risk. Innovation. Perhaps these are the words Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve heard the most in every newspaper on every continent I have been in the last 15 years. We constantly listen and learn from different successful cases around the world and wonder if such an idea would apply to our reality. But in fact, what awaits us in the future of print and digital journalism? Does anyone have the answer to what lies ahead? I asked five professionals whom I admire, from different areas, countries, and realities, about ideas and their perspectives for the future.

I NT E RV I E W:

RA DA R

HOW NYT ACHIEVED AN OLYMPIC FEAT OF IMMERSIVE JOURNALISM

The New York Times published its first augmented reality feature in February. Readers are able to meet world-class Olympic competitors (a figure skater, a big-air snowboarder, a short-track speed skater, and a hockey goalie) in midperformance. Through your phone, the room around you looks just as it is, except the athlete is in it with you.

READ THE ARTICLE

nyti.ms/2ETULfw

Saulo Santana

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

forget that what we deliver is a product. And we too often fail to remember the fundamental things, such as our points of sale. In Germany, for example, our newspapers are sold in kiosks that are often dirty, and where people buy cigarettes, lottery, and vodka. Do we really want our product to be associated with these places? Why do you think big companies from other markets invest significant amounts on product sales points? And we don’t care about that? Why don’t we invest in our own shops? Or why don’t we put our content directly where our readers are? Say, how about selling a fashion magazine in a fashion store? Sounds sensible, but we don’t.

Philipp Jessen

Editor-in-Chief, Stern.de (Germany) If you could choose one idea, concept or execution that you have seen out there and is worth stealing, what would it be? For some media outlets the homepage doesn’t exist. People are increasingly consuming news in a different way. More and more the focus is on content. A great example of innovation, taking in consideration this matter, is what Now This News is doing, intelligently taking content directly to where the readers are. What makes it special or innovative? The focus is on the product, and the product is the content. This news site is radical by killing its home page. Once you enter the website, you will see this message:

Javier Errea

Founder, Errea Comunicación (Spain) If you could choose one idea, concept or execution that you have seen out there and is worth stealing, what would it be? I love some small, radical, real journalism projects, such as XXI magazine in France. No digital platform strategy, no advertising revenues, no newsstands distribution. Just quality paid circulation and print. That means courage, clear-cut ideas, far from trends and world forum kits. I also admire small print and independent and profitable projects in Europe. Now is the best time to be disruptive.

HOME PAGE. EVEN THE WORD SOUNDS OLD. WE BRING THE NEWS TO YOUR SOCIAL FEED.

What must news companies do to avoid failure while being innovative? There is no formula. Each medium must find its way and know who their readers are. It is wrong to think that a thing that works for one product in a different market will work for your publication as well. Is it still possible to be innovative in print? Yes. For me, innovation means quality. We sometimes RADA R

THE GUARDIAN REDESIGN The Guardian debuted a brand new look and logo early this year. Developed by its in-house design team led by Creative Director Alex Breuer, the London-based daily abandoned its Berliner format (previously designed by Mark Porter) in favor of a tabloid. That shift to a smaller page size has meant a complete revamp of the typography, grid, and editorial structure. In an interview, MagCulture’s Jeremy Leslie quizzed Bauer about the rationale and visual philosophy behind the latest design.

READ THE INTERVIEW

bit.ly/2oNSdI0

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What makes it special or innovative? These projects put their focus on the content.

bad; it continues to have its place and value. But the data visualization applied to infographics allowed this language to reach another level: that of discovering stories through the data.

What must news companies do to avoid failure while being innovative? The answer is simple: quality. That’s all. Nothing else.

What must news companies do to avoid failure while being innovative? To think outside the box. To allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them. To have an open and multi-disciplinary culture. To encourage experimentation, discussion, and constructive criticism. And to have the humility to recognize that our profession is constantly learning.

Is it still possible to be innovative in print? Is this a serious question? Are you kidding me? I might also ask the opposite: Is it possible to be innovative in digital? Why everyone agrees that digital means innovation and print means tradition or convention? I strongly disagree. I complain. I protest. I’m fed up with the so-called digital superiority. I’m reclaiming my missing self-esteem. What we have is a dangerous and unfair question.

Is it still possible to be innovative in print? Yes. To the extent that you must know the audience that you are writing for, and looking for alternatives that meet your desires. Journalism is a democratic tool and independent of the medium in which it is disseminated and will always be necessary for the development of society. And this is precisely where innovation lies.

Fabio Sales

Art Director, O Estado de S. Paulo (Brazil) If you could choose one idea, concept or execution that you have seen out there and is worth stealing, what would it be? The development of data-driven infographics that The New York Times implemented over the last decade which influenced the newsrooms worldwide.

Marco Grieco

Art Director, Expresso (Portugal) If you could choose one idea, concept or execution that you have seen out there and is worth stealing, what would it be? I think everything that surrounds us can be a source of inspiration. An automobile, an advertisement, a piece of furniture, a smartphone, etc. That is if you

What makes it special or innovative? The application of infographics to journalism until then were the classical ones (schemes, drawings, processes) explaining to the reader specific points of a report or a complete report. Not that this is

REACTIONS FROM ART DIRECTORS ACROSS EUROPE

Brand New, a blog dedicated to brand identity rated the new logo positively, particularly the new digital monogram. The uppercase ‘G’, according to Armin Vit, sits infinitely better inside a circle compared to the old one. Read his review here: bit.ly/2DGmMql On his blog, Roger Black offered an uninvited fix on the letter spacing: bit.ly/2DmUnaP

OLD

N EW

And check out the funny response from newspaper rivals, like the barbed welcome above: bit.ly/2FjUCof

Art directors from European newspapers are quick to offer their impressions. Some are calling the overall design ‘classic’ and ‘distinctive,’ others ‘ornamental’ (front page) and ‘conflicting’ (color choice). bit.ly/2Ffp6Zi

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

are open-minded. Even the not-so-good ideas can likely trigger good concepts. While looking at examples of great modern journalism, it’s impossible not to stumble at the website FiveThirtyEight. Created by journalist and statistician Nate Silver, it was bought by ESPN, after being a partner of The New York Times group. It’s amazing how everything can be analyzed in numbers, charts, and maps! It’s a modern and imaginative way of deconstructing and tell stories without losing the main point. What makes it special or innovative? Infographic is not a new language for newspapers and magazines, but the idea that everything can be explained and turned into data, therefore enriching the story—that to me is fascinating. Data journalism has become another way storytelling. What must news companies do to avoid failure while making innovation? That’s a million-dollar question. But in my humble opinion, the news companies have to be where the readers and users are. They have to understand their needs and tastes to deliver the best product. It entails that the newsroom has to work side by side with the tech department. After the journalist power era and the designer era, the ones who can do coding or master programming languages rule. Is it still possible to be innovative in print? Yes, of course! Right now, there are so many good examples all over the world! Through the last years, it’s difficult to separate the paper and the digital when you talk about journalism and design. And both will continue to evolve, many times hand in hand. But I really think that there will be a time when we will have to look back and analyze the whole path. Are we doing a better job in the newspaper now? Not just the design (whether it is elegant or not). Good journalism—I mean good visual journalism—will never die. Or, they should never die!

Gustavo Lo Valvo

Design Director, Bureau de Diseño Editorial (Argentina) If you could choose one idea, concept or execution that you have seen out there and is worth stealing, what would it be? The design of Politiken in Denmark. What makes it special or innovative? It is a perfect marriage between form and content. What must news companies do to avoid failure while being innovative? To understand that innovation and technology are not synonymous. Innovation is about ideas, while technology is a means to express them. It is empty by itself. Is it still possible to be innovative in print? I think it is not only possible, but it is absolutely necessary. The dizzying pace of change in the digital media anticipates a rapid migration of home pages to notifications on mobile and social networks. Paradoxically, these home pages will disappear sooner than printed papers. The current paradigm of the newspaper is exhausted, and the newspapers stopped being the vehicle of the news. Their great opportunity is to become the vehicle for information. The daily paper has lost the race for immediacy but can win the fight for the depth. That is, if it reacts on time.

TO O LB OX

THE FIVE MIRACLES OF MAP The use of maps has become an indispensable tool in visual storytelling for a number of reasons: • It enhances the story and the reader experience. • It increases dwell-time and acts as a ‘hook’ to other content. • It provides context and improves engagement. • It enables a highly personalized and unique experience. • It creates valuable interactive content in an increasingly visual era.

READ THE BLOG

bit.ly/2Fi4vCD

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Mapping for News Design What kind of map do you want to create? Carlstadt East Rutherford

Moonachie

Ridgefield Edgewater

Rutherford

Central Park

North Bergen

Secaucus 95

Woodside

Corona

Maspeth

Jersey City

478

Bayonne

495

New York

Queens

278

Statue of Liberty

MY ACCOUNT

678

Flushing

Long Island City Hoboken 9

Ridgewood

Brooklyn

UPPER UPPERNEW NEW YORK YORKBAY BAY

Richmond Hill Woodhaven

Long Long Island Island

Annotation Map

m maappss44nneew wss..ccoom m//© ©H HE ER RE E

Map Style Previews

East Elmhurst

Empire State Building

280

Account Settings

College Point

278

Astoria

Weehawken Twp

Kearny

My maps

95 278

Fairview

PROJECTS

Bronx

Belleville North Arlington

Ozone Park

2km

Locator map

Dynamic Map

Choropleth

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German Christmas Markets

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Night map of Australia

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Nov 29th 2017

Italy with islands

Eindhoven-Monika’s project

Amsterdam

Haarlem

Las Vegas

Nov 29th 2017

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o t s y a iF fty-wproof futurcea-reer your

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

The future of news design looks bright… except when it doesn’t. When it gives you The Fear.

LO UPE

NEW

OLD

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE This may have gone unnoticed, but The New York Times tweaked their logo on February 1, 2018. The changes are subtle—almost elusive even to a discerning eye.

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T EXT:

Bonita Burton

ILLUSTRATI O N :

Victor Sanjinez Garcia Maybe you want to become head of product or a cross-media director—but how do you get there? When it comes to future-proofing your career, the key is to focus on skills that grow, not trends that fade. You can’t be an effective coder if you can’t communicate, particularly these days when nearly all code development is a team effort. You can’t coordinate news design across print, mobile and voice platforms if you can’t analyze and distill vast rivers of data. And you can’t build a case for virtual reality, or any kind of immersive journalism if you can’t defend your position in the language of business. The good news: these more traditional skills are not just for the future, they’re needed today to create dynamic, engaged, and audience-driven news reports. People who know what news is can dig up facts, write, and visualize a message will always have jobs. And people who can articulate a vision, elevate the quality and guide others through their mental barriers will always be sought after to lead. Here’s how to position yourself as both—in 2018 and beyond.

The apocalyptic headlines keep coming: This year alone, the Wall Street Journal has cut newsroom jobs in Asia and Europe. News Corp and Fairfax Media both gutted photography and editing staffs in Australia. Singapore’s largest newspaper publisher will shed 10 percent of its workforce by year’s end. In the US, Gannett shuttered two of its five design studios this summer—before cutting 1,000 more jobs this fall. In the past 15 years, more than half the jobs in the news industry have disappeared, and the American Society of News Editors has given up trying to track job losses. (This is probably a bad time to mention the closing of North American paper mills and an impending spike in newsprint prices.) As newspaper jobs are vanishing, the number of journalists at digital-only publications (while still outnumbered four-to-one by print journalists) is tripling. These emerging jobs come with funky new titles and mind-bending scope—opportunities that are exciting and intimidating all at once. Web editors, e-book designers, and multimedia producers are sooo 2007. Yesterday’s graphic designers are today’s UX designers. Will tomorrow’s UX designers be avatar programmers, drone experience designers or cybernetic directors? Let’s say you want to be a virtual interaction designer or an augmented reality producer—what’s the path? Maybe you want to work as an algorithm investigator. Or a lead data scientist. Or a machine-learning designer. Or a visual fusionist.

Think like an inventor

WHAT’S the greatest risk to your company’s future success? CEOs surveyed by the World Association of Newspaper (WAN-IFRA) this year overwhelmingly said it’s a reluctance to innovate. Sure, some people are born with innate genius. But you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to learn strategies to become more inventive. Like any other skill, mastering innovation just takes practice.

TO O LBOX

HOW TO TRANSITION FROM A GRAPHIC DESIGNER TO FRONT-END DEVELOPER

Graphic design serves the purpose of solving a problem with attractive visual forms supported by invisible systems or structures. For Taiwanese designer Vince MingPu Shao, being a developer with design skills allows him to have way more control and authority over each case and client. Working on web development or applications allows one to propagate information efficiently.

HOW TO FORMAT YOUR MESSAGES IN SLACK READ THE ARTICLE

bit.ly/2tgSkBm

Good design brings clarity to conversations. Though a lot of what people type in Slack is straight text, there are formatting options that let you adjust text emphasis and hierarchy to help convey as much information as possible, efficiently. Thoughtfully laid-out messages don’t have to be your focus on every interaction on Slack, but they can be extremely helpful in specific contexts.

READ THE TUTORIAL

bit.ly/2tiXixw

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

REBOOT DAILY. Stop telling yourself you’re not creative. Direct your own learning and try something new today—even something small like taking a different route home or trying a new food. Find a way to use all five senses on your next project. Spend time with children. Exercise. Eat right. Sleep.

RESPECT YOUR RHYTHM. Pay attention to when and where you get your best ideas. In the morning or late at night? Surrounded by noise or in a quiet place? In your Sunday best or jeans and a T-shirt? Buried in clutter or neatly tidied up? Then do whatever you can to bring those elements into your personal work environment.

first s r e stom u c the s h ’ t t i I . w port p ideas u r s u t ins. o e y w g t t o s a t e So t voice ent th r i m e u h g r se t first a r and u e stom u c t s be

RETHINK YOUR PITCH. Chances are good that your organization is less innovative than you are. So you’ve got to create internal support among non-innovators. Push your ideas not as something really extraordinary, but as the normal next thing to do.

REVIVE THE STORYBOARD. Newsrooms need more people who have already worked through possible future scenarios, and a storyboard is a business-friendly way to get there. It’s an especially valuable tool if you’re someone who’s super right-brained and always rambling off topic.

REMEMBER YOUR READER. You’re going to encounter change-resisters who will say no to anything. So test your ideas with customers first and use their voice to get support. It’s the best customer-first argument that wins.

REFINE TOGETHER. Innovation is much more likely to survive when it has lots of fathers and mothers. Don’t fall into the trap of appointing yourself as ‘the innovator’ or others will tend to sit back. Instead, help others to become

more innovative themselves. Make sure you’re open to the information flow—secrecy breeds suspicion and it slows down collaboration.

RECOGNIZE THE BOSS. Bring top managers in from the start, and not in some distant steering-committee way. Be the person who helps decision-makers discover new insights themselves. When they are part of the process, they’ll support the end result.

RESPOND QUICKLY. On average, a news innovation project takes 12 to 18 months to launch. Strategy changes during that time can put your innovation at risk—so stay focused and deliver as quickly as you can.

REBOUND FROM MISTAKES. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, right? The best lessons come from mistakes. But they’re

B O O KMA RK

DATA JOURNALISM AWARDS 2018 The Global Editors Network, in partnership with Google News Lab and the Knight Foundation, runs an annual Data Journalism Awards competition to celebrate outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide. Over $21,500 cash prize is up for grabs across twelve categories, including Data Visualization of the Year, Data Journalism Website of the Year, Innovation in Data Journalism, Investigation of the Year, News Data App of the Year, and Open Data Award. The deadline for the submission of entries is on March 26, 2018.

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES HERE

bit.ly/2Fi4vCD

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Think like a journalist TACKLING fake news has become a major challenge as newsrooms wipe out their editing ranks and consolidate into regional hubs. In the US, public relations reps now outnumber journalists five to one. This presents another opportunity to distinguish yourself: Human-led fact-checking is still the best weapon against misinformation.

11 only valuable lessons if you apply the learnings. When things go off the rails, avoid the blame game and focus on the things in your control: your planning, preparation, and execution. Absorb the teaching moments and keep moving forward.

REDESIGN, CONSTANTLY. Stay creatively unsatisfied, and never stop iterating. Innovation doesn’t stop at the first no— that’s the moment it really begins.



ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Zone out to classical music like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons or Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Baroque music has been shown to synchronize brain waves at about 60 cycles per second— a frequency associated with increased alpha waves that enhance creativity.

SHARPEN YOUR MORAL COMPASS. Integrity is still the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Train and listen to your conscience. Define what you truly believe in and analyze every choice you make. Tell the truth and keep your promises. Find the courage to take the unpopular stand. Don’t associate with or work for companies who ask you to sacrifice your personal value system in order to have professional success.

SHARPEN YOUR ATTITUDE. An appetite for rapid change and continuous learning remains irresistible in newsrooms. High performers create their own feedback loops rather than waiting for feedback from others.

SHARPEN YOUR CURIOSITY. Always question the world in which you live. Get some real-life experience so you can look at issues from different cultural and political perspectives. And remember, the people who move forward fastest are those who show an interest in helping others get ahead.

SHARPEN YOUR NEWS JUDGMENT. The avalanche of information is bigger than ever, and your professional survival depends being able to think critically, not just creatively. Know your audience. Know how to personal-

RADAR

VISUALIZING MEDIA BIASES Vanessa Otero, a patent attorney by profession, embarked on a mission in 2016 to chart media biases. The chart has been revised several times. The latest update (version 3.1) was published in February this year. “In the past, national evening news programs, local evening news programs, and the front pages of print newspapers were dominated by fact-reporting stories,” says Otero. “Now, however, many sources people consider to be ‘news sources’ are actually dominated by analysis and opinion pieces.”

VIEW THE UPDATE

bit.ly/2F5ly8x

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

ize large-scale events at the individual level. Know how to identify conflict in a story and wring out the emotion. Know how to appropriately use odd news. Find someone you can trust to backstop your decision-making, then take the helm at setting the agenda whenever you can.

SHARPEN YOUR INTERVIEWING. It’s the most important skill for any content creator, whether you’re talking with sources or figuring out how to collaborate with colleagues. Do your homework in advance. Write down your questions. Make eye contact and keep the flow relaxed. Do more listening than talking, but never walk away from any conversation confused.

SHARPEN YOUR FACT-CHECKING. If you don’t do the legwork, it’s going to show. Nail the basics like names, dates, math, spelling and grammar. Seek out experts with different perspectives. Make friends with a research librarian because—surprise!—not everything is online, and not everything online is accurate or complete. Check, check and check again.

SHARPEN YOUR WRITING. In multiplatform media environments, the ability to write different types of stories is essential. Writing news is different than writing for the web or writing a script for a podcast or video. The more formats you’re proficient in, the farther you’ll go.

SHARPEN YOUR DECISION-MAKING. Be someone who provides total quality management. You can mature this skill by focusing more on the process that leads to the decision than on the decision itself: master the pro/ con list, cost/benefit analysis and risk/reward ratio. Check your biases. Solicit opinions from people you trust. Make the best decision possible and get comfortable explaining your thought process.

M UST HAVE

Visual Journalism: Infographics from the World’s Best Newsrooms and Designers This book reveals the masters of this discipline and their finest works, as well as showcasing portraits of studios and individuals on how the world of infographics continues to evolve.

FIVE BOOKS TO READ TO STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME If you are looking for inspirations, you’ve got to add these to your next purchase.

Price: $42.80

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Past, Present, Future: Twenty-Five Years of Information Graphics A compendium of essays where media experts and industry practitioners around the world were asked to analyze the current state of infographics and to offer the prognosis of what’s next. Price: €30

bit.ly/2I3ADIP

WWW.SND.ORG / DESIGN JOURNAL

SHARPEN YOUR DATA GAME. Gathering, filtering and visualizing what is happening beyond what the eye can see has a growing value. Newsrooms around the world are looking for ‘sense-makers’ who know how to search, clean and transform data into something tangible. Which candidates are writing their own ticket to the future? Experienced journalists who have the stamina to look at confusing, boring raw data and ‘see’ the hidden stories.

SHARPEN YOUR SUBJECT MASTERY. The key to authority is knowing what you’re talking about and being able to express it well. Be someone who knows a lot of things about a lot of things. Read, read, and read some more. And there’s no better way to learn than to raise your hand to teach others.



ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Learn about newsgathering resources on the Deep Web (not the illegal stuff on the Dark Web), areas of the Internet closed to surface searching. Search engines like Google index less than one percent of web content, totally missing most data behemoths and academic journals.

Think like an advocate PASSION gives your purpose. And without purpose, you’ll drift through life underachieving. So lend your voice, passion, and experience to your work, and you can drive real change. Ask yourself: What do you want people to think? To feel? To do? People who can turn their passion into action are magnetic and irrepressible.

Design Is Storytelling A playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, and experiences. Price: $12.16

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FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE. More than ever, the world needs journalists who will act as watchdogs for what is right and fair. And yes, this applies to our own organizations. Know your rights and freedoms, and never be intimidated into leaving your principles at the door.

FOR YOUR COMMUNITY. You can deliver a fair and balanced report and still make a positive impact where you live. Push for that extra layer that goes beyond informing to connecting. Stand up for your town. Champion good causes. Spend less time behind your screen and more time out interacting in the streets.

FOR RESPECTFUL DISCOURSE. Be a bastion of civility in impolite times. Provide a public forum that enhances understanding instead of fueling vitriol. Commit to tackling contentious issues frankly, but with kindness.

FOR THE USER. Smart design is all about how well something works, not just how snazzy it looks. Champion content and interfaces that help your audience in practical ways.

FOR EXCELLENCE. Define the highend and celebrate the patterns that work. Be the employee who works harder than anyone else to keep standards high. Help others feel good about a job well done. Provide and seek opportunities for development.

FOR YOUR BRAND. There’s no better spokesperson for your mission than a happy customer. Resist the trap of pushing content instead of pulling people to the conversation. Remind yourself and others what your organization stands for. And don’t be shy about thanking your audience for its support.

Now You See It and Other Essays on Design In more than 50 smart, accessible short pieces from the past decade, Michael Bierut engages with a fascinating and diverse array of subjects. Price: $24.04

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Creative Anarchy Graphic designer and author Denise Bolser has created a book explaining and exploring both the rule following and rule-breaking of design. Price: $24.87

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

t c e j o r p a e k i l k n i Th

FOR GOOD HR. Strong people management is more than just being good with the soft skills; it’s understanding how to engage employees to drive results. It means leading the way in recruitment, career development, and succession planning. Be a voice for people-friendly policies that attract and retain top talent. Loyalty happens when employees have more than good professional experience, they have a good life experience.

SIMPLY having a project plan doubles your chances of success. It’s not always easy for creative types to think operationally, but doing so can rocket-fuel your career at any level. Books and theory are all fine, but the more you can be part of real-life situations, the smarter and more valuable you’ll become. So raise your hand as much as possible.

FOR YOUR TEAM. People need to be supported in three simple ways: to feel heard, valued and understood. Learn to fight the right fights by distinguishing between your goals and your wishes.

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER. You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t organize work for other people if your own personal life and projects are going nowhere. Get organized personally, and you’ll immediately improve as a project manager.

FOR THE NEXT GENERATION. Volunteer to mentor students. Find a way to keep your internship program alive. Invite someone new to the table. Help younger people view failure as a toll booth instead of a roadblock. Stop talking about how the industry is dying and start energizing the way forward.

GET THE RIGHT TEAM. Be honest about gaps. All of the technology in the world won’t make you an effective project manager if you don’t have skill sets that align with required roles. This is an important first step: If you assign the wrong person to a task, you’re reducing your chance of success before the project even begins.

FOR YOURSELF. Believe in your abilities. Make strong arguments for what you need. Protect your personal energy by staying detached enough that the job doesn’t steal your sense of meaning outside the office. Take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. Try to laugh each day.

GET PROFICIENT AT PRESENTING. Delivery skills are crucial in any form of communication, and too few newsroom staffers know how to sell an idea. The moment you start rambling is the moment people tune you out. Know your subject and don’t skip rehearsal.

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ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Donate to Committee to Protect Journalists, which tracks the 262 media workers jailed worldwide as of 2017. Among them is our SND colleague from Turkey, Fevzi Yazici, who was detained since 2016 as part of the effort to silence the critics of the Erdogan regime.

cpj.org

GET SMART ABOUT MEETINGS. Bad meetings have a financial and emotional cost. Make sure your agenda is tight. Start and end on time. And be sure to recap everyone’s action items before adjourning.

TO O LBOX

WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM THE PODCAST SUPER LISTENERS?

According to the result of 2017 Edison Research, a highly engaged consumer of informative digital audio content have the following characteristics: • Greater content consumption (by hours and by shows listened to). • A willingness to promote con-

tent to others, and reliance on word-of-mouth. • A preference for subscription and time-shifted consumption. • Reliance on mobile consumption, usually in transit. • A preference for in-depth content. • A sign of loyalty to public media, and willingness to invest — even as broadcast consumption levels decline.

READ THE FULL REPORT

bit.ly/2yD7AGV

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manager

GET USED TO NEGOTIATING. Be a giver, not just a taker. Don’t expect every negotiation to end in a positive outcome—compromises in resources, budgets, schedules and scope creep are unavoidable. Be diplomatic and settle differences with minimal noise.

GET FAMILIAR WITH RISK. Plan for uncertainty and prepare for the unexpected. Perform risk management with your team every week. A common rookie mistake is rushing into the doing of a project before analyzing all the things that can go wrong. See how much preemptive problem solving you can do up front, and you’ll have a smoother success.

GET FLEXIBLE. Projects need stability and control to be executed efficiently, but uncertainty is a fact of life. Experienced project managers never assume the final

plan is final before implementation. Give yourself the freedom to maneuver and adapt.

GET ACCOUNTABLE. What gets tracked, gets done. Create a task list and stay on top of the delivery timetable. In case list-making and Gantt charts scare you, try a wall of post-it notes you can remove when a task is finished.

GET A SENSE OF HUMOR. Being in charge doesn’t mean you have to take on a dictator’s personality. You don’t have to be a comedian, either, but humor does relieve idea-stifling tensions. Treat people the way you like to be treated—with respect and a sense of humanity.

GET FAMILIAR WITH BUSINESS-SPEAK. You’re already a quality expert. The next step is to learn to write, or at least contribute to, a business case. Ask someone to walk you

RADAR

WHAT? SHE QUIT HER JOB AS NEWS EDITOR TO BE A FREELANCE ILLUSTRATOR?

Hannah Bae started her career in Seoul working at the American embassy during the Great Recession. When she came back to the US, she made a name for herself in New York at Newsday and CNN Money with her social media skills and knack for following viral news. Last year, she decided to quit her full-time job to take a leap into the freelance world and pursue passion projects.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

through the supply chain, the broader organizational structure and ways that project teams are formed. When you can understand a project model, it’s not that big of a leap to understand a business model.

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ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Make your bed. US Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven said, “You will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to do another task and another. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things.”

sibility. Read the books, trade publications and social media links your boss reads. Learn how the processes in your organization—not just the newsroom—work to get things done.

BE COMPETITIVE. Accepting mediocrity won’t lead you anywhere. Be excellent in everything you do. Whatever your job is, do it with all you’ve got in you. Never settle or give less.

BE A DOER, NOT A DREAMER. Hold yourself accountable for being selfmotivated, knowing what you’re doing and proving that you can work out all the de-

Think like a boss

OUR industry is starving for more creative thinkers in decision-making roles. Women and journalists of color, I’m looking at you: Of all newsroom supervisors, only 13%are minorities and only 37% are women—a percentage that has stubbornly stood still for 20 years, according to American Societies of News Editors. So learn to manage your boss, and then become the boss.

BE CONSCIENTIOUS. Respect the time of your boss. Respect a closed door. Respect the personal rhythm of your boss—are they a morning or afternoon person? Respect their communication style—do they prefer face-to-face or written updates? Bring solutions, not problems their way. And understand the line between being assertive and downright pushy.

BE STUDIOUS. Amp up your intellectual horsepower. Learn all you can about the scope of your boss’ respon-

B O O KMA RK

JOB HUNTING? Besides the SND Job Board, here are some of the best sites that you need to bookmark if you are seriously (or passively) searching for design and visual journalism jobs. Make sure that you sign up to the job alert to get regular updates.

POYNTER JOBS

JOURNALISM JOBS

SPD JOB BOARD

bit.ly/2FMdPwq

journalismjobs.com

spd.org/job-board

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tails. Devise your own self-appraisal process and track your progress, in writing, at least monthly.

BE SELF-DIRECTED. Ask for opportunities to fill in for your boss. Then do the job, not just acting as if you’re holding their place. Face adversity head-on and don’t hold back anything that needs to be said.

BE RESOURCEFUL. Prove that you know where to get information, resources, training, and education your boss needs when they need it. Never stop networking, so you have copious resources and people to call on for referrals.

BE POSITIVE. What separates bosses from workers is the ability to articulate a vision. It’s a simple fact: Optimistic people achieve more because they believe in possibilities. No one takes complainers seriously as strategic thinkers. Looking for a shortcut to ‘the table?’Be the person who brings upbeat energy and enthusiasm to the day-to-day routine.

BE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT. All management is people management. Everyone is afraid of something, and until their fears are addressed, they’ll focus on what worries them instead of what inspires them. Learn to be someone who can read and work a room, and you’ll go far—fast.

BE RESILIENT. Talent is one thing, but persistence is everything. Without persistence, you never get past the first hurdle and fulfill your true potential. Don’t give up before finishing. Success typically comes after months, even years, of hard work.

BE BRAVE. All the old clichés about being liked and being respected have a lot of truth to them. The most amazing leaders are those who dare to be their true selves, powerfully. Take a stand. Act with integrity. And seek compassion more than perfection.

ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Start writing a Friday flash report of what was accomplished the past week and what’s on your plate ahead. This update should take you only 15 minutes to write and your boss five minutes to read. It’s a smart way to send a weekly brag note while demonstrating personal accountability.

MEDIA BISTRO

AIGA DESIGN JOBS

LINKEDIN JOBS

UPWORK FREELANCE WORK

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

Are you experiencing a creative rut? Do you sense that you’re stuck in an uninspiring work? Are you looking for a new gig beyond the entry-level position and take your salary to the next notch? But are you noticing that the jobs in the market require a different skill set which makes you reluctant to apply? If your answers are YES to all of the above, then most likely you’re undergoing a mid-career crisis. So what are you supposed to do? Here are some helpful tips from our colleagues.

MID - CAREER ADVICE FOR VISUAL JOURNALIST MIGUEL GOMEZ / Design Director, Gulf News (UAE) Learning to code while you still in your career is a good idea. Or at least know the basics of coding and user experience. It will create a bridge of understanding between the visual journalists and the programmers. Of course, a journalism background is the key—that’s the difference between a graphic designer and a visual journalist. It is essential to embrace all the digital storytelling tools to learn how to tell stories for the screen, and it’s currently in mobile, where the action is.

Every visual journalist needs to assess one’s specific situation. Though it’s essential to have a general understanding of the latest digital trends, how deep you go is attached to what the individual needs to do the work. Another thing to consider is that technological advancement is a moving target. If you add the fact that our audiences today are hyper-volatile in ways they choose to access content, then as a communicator you have to become very nimble. For instance, people were crazy about the tablets, then the Apple watch, but as you are working for any given platform with one hand, you have to keep the other hand free for the next best thing. Any platform can become dated overnight. The only thing that remains solid is the basic design skills. No matter how you apply them. Keep your design strengths current and your problem-solving skills as a communicator. That is talent; anything else can be learned. Having said all that, if you are going to design for a digital platform, it is important to understand its nature. But designing is not building. There are architects, and there are builders. Learning code applies more to builders; coming up with the design applies to architects. They need to work together. NURI DUCASSI / Creative Director, Toronto Star (CANADA) If we’re talking about visual journalists who already have a solid foundation, then my advice is to DIVERSIFY. Learn as many new skills as possible. Don’t shy away if you’re given an opportunity to work on a new project; embrace the challenge. Also, whatever you do, don’t copy, be original. It’s the only way to stand out from the crowd. LUCIE LACAVA / Founder, Lacava Design (CANADA)

PLANNING TO APPLY FOR A JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP? Fellowships can boost career in many ways. They provide a supportive environment that can yield more impactful stories. They supplement commissions from journalism outlets and often provide financial assistance for travel. It’s great way to build relationship as well (the camaraderie shaped during a fellowship can endure long.) So where to apply?

Reynolds Journalism Institute Media professionals with innovative ideas to advance the practice of journalism can apply to this residential fellowship in Missouri.

Reuters Journalism Fellowship Ambitious and high-achieving journalists can spend one to three terms at Oxford University (UK) with this research fellowship.

rjionline.org/fellowships

bit.ly/2H0ThzK

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Make radar your habit. Look as far as possible to be able to encounter future trends as soon as possible. Avoid the mainstream as it leads to the main waterfall. Find your niche; lead this niche. Things aren’t what they appear. Networks are knowledge accelerators. Conferences are job markets. You are your own brand.

Eight years ago, we were tinkering with video and Flash was still a useful tool. Video now is king, and you can create interactive with a variety of third-party apps, like ion or SnapApp. Visual journalists should always keep up with the trends. Evolve with the times. I don’t believe it would ever hurt anyone professionally to keep growing and adding new tools into the toolbox. So I urge both students and colleagues to find something new to learn. I’m not sure if coding is a must, as I see web apps step up to offer easy-to-use, minimal coding platforms. Basic coding and knowledge of HTML or Javascript is always a bonus—don’t get me wrong—but apps like Tableau just make things so much simpler. All one needs is to have a good grasp of coding fundamentals. The biggest problem I hear is where to get training. I understand it can get expensive to enroll in a course online or go to a training workshop. But this is where self-discipline is critical. There are tons of video tutorials on YouTube and plenty of websites to help anyone learn a new program. I learned the basics of After Effects one afternoon—thanks to YouTube! In my downtime, I created an animation based on an infographic I was working on. I had to learn how to do sound-editing, and tinker with visual effects on my own. It was a lot of hard work, and at times stressful. But I learned more and more with every project I’ve put together. For inspiration, I turn to Vimeo to see what other artists are do-

MICHAEL STOLL Professor, Augsburg University of Applied Sciences (GERMANY)

ing and figure out whether I can recreate some of the cool transitions that I like. I do believe that if one wants to further their education, then a fellowship or graduate school would be great. I just graduated with my MFA in motion design doing online courses at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I took the longer route so I could study the trend in motion graphics in the newspaper industry, and I was able to enroll courses in animation, storyboard design, and even digital illustration. It was a long journey, but the experience was fun and amazing. Fellowships can certainly offer the same kind of training within a smaller time frame and significant savings as well. If the organized instruction is your cup of tea, then I think both avenues are great. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of doing one set of skills for your entire career. As artists, we need to grow in our craft to get better. We’re all here to tell visual stories, so we should be able to tell them using a wide variety of tools whether that’s animation, 3D illustrations, or hand-painted artwork. There’s nothing wrong with growing—it’s just a matter of how you want to learn. Take a class! Find a tutorial! If you can’t find an online forum, create one and invite the people who you admire to the thread. Contact people to learn more about how they learned their skills. If you’re the person they contact, respond and help someone out. We’re all in this together and can learn so much from each other.

BELINDA IVEY / CEO, KarBel Multimedia (US)

HOW TO CRAFT A WINNING FELLOWSHIP PROPOSAL? The JSK Journalism Fellowships It supports diverse journalists from around the world who are deeply engaged in exploring solutions to the urgent issues facing journalism.

VisCom Knight Fellowship An extraordinary opportunity for a mid-career professional to earn a Master’s degree in one year at Ohio University.

Neiman Foundation Fellowship An extraordinary, transformative learning opportunity open to journalists working in all media in every country around the world.

jsk.stanford.edu

ohio.edu/viscom

nieman.harvard.edu

bit.ly/2Fa6Znu

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

WHAT WILL BE YOUR INNOVATION JOURNEY? T EXT & IM AG E S :

Photography

Robb Montgomery DO YOU remember the first time you sent a digital news photo to someone else? For me, the date was June 4, 1987, and the picture that I transmitted to the AP was taken at 21,000 feet with my Nikon F3 pressed against a tiny window at the rear of an of Air Force refueling jet. In 1987 I was a sophomore studying journalism at a small university in Illinois, when I got the chance to join a military exercises press pool as a photojournalist. It took seven minutes to transmit this black-and-white picture over phone lines to Chicago using a hightech machine that looked like this.

When I was a journalism student, I had no idea just how many different visual roles I would be lucky enough to fill, and how many great stories and innovative projects that I would be fortunate enough to have the chance to serve as a professional journalist. Let me share with you a little bit about my journey in the hope that it may comfort you, or perhaps even scare you, about what the future may hold for your visual journalism journey. I walked into journalism school with a camera over my shoulder and fell in love with nonfiction photographic storytelling. I graduated four years later as a graphics reporter and award-winning design director at the dawn of the desktop publishing revolution. That eraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology wave completely reshaped how print publications were produced,

STORYTELLING MUST-HAVES

Three years ago, ROBB MONTGOMERY suggested ten apps that every mobile journalist should have. We asked if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an update to the list and surprisingly he recommended only these two essentials which could turn every smartphone into a powerful beast:

J O U R NALI S M S C HO O L Sociology Graphic design Economics

Technology Coding Video production

and smart newspapers and magazines quickly took advantage of the speed and efficiency of creating more visually compelling reports. The provisions for earning a journalism degree at that time required one to study two other subjects at a significant depth. I chose economics and sociology to meet the requirements. I also completed a minor in graphic design, and I got no credit towards my journalism degree units as a reward. I am not an illustrator, and I was never the greatest typographer, but I had a hunch then that I was ahead of the curve in other areas, and I was okay with that.

FILMIC PRO has zoom controls, multiple frame rates, manual control over focus, exposure, white balance, shutter speed control, and an audio monitoring.

Sun-Times redesign Interview Magazine Sun Publications Web widgets Leadership

INNOVATIO N KidNews MoJo App Red Streak XS Magazine The Examiner Reporter apps S.M.A.R.T Media Lab

I arrived at university having already earned a two-year study in Digital Electronics and have already written my first computer programs. In high school, I was a geek in the Audio-Video club and also learned how to produce short films and live television shows. It was the time of MTV and I loved making music videos. My newspaper editors didn’t care did I knew how to code or that I knew how to produce video stories, so the graphics and photojournalism skills were enough to get me started in my career. And lucky me, I landed a job at a large-circulation newspaper and quickly learned that I was among a small group of people in a giant newsroom who actually knew how to publish a newspaper page with a Mac. This rare knowledge (as it turned out) meant that I was quickly recruited by senior managers to be a part of high-profile innovation projects in the company. To work as a designer on teams that were developing new newspaper products for young readers. Wow. This was a career path I loved. This work was native to my talents. I have always considered design first as a problem-solving process.

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Of course, I learned how to develop and apply design patterns as well as use color palettes, libraries, and style guides in my newspaper design work, but the process of iterative what-if? innovation exploration was the work I was truly drawn to. I’m attracted to working the hard problems. The newsrooms where I worked pro-

of faith with no certain outcome. What I can tell you is that once you start spinning the wheels of innovation in your own work, you will find that they can take you on an amazing journey through many ups and downs, through many uncertain moments, and to exotic destinations that were inconceivable at the start. The projects, partnerships and new businesses that I have developed over

EN TR E P R E NE U R I ALI S M Montgomery Multimedia Consulting + Produce workshops + Develop new products Training + Video journalism + Media development

Kidvibe Sound recordings Distribution Copyrights Rights management Music publishing

Partnerships + WAN-IFRA + Thompson Reuters + Schools — EFJ — Notre Dame — Stockholm Uni + KTH — Danish School of Journalism — FH Journalism School Vienna

vided many opportunities for me to do just that. From art directing the Kidnews section of the Chicago Tribune, to building the Red Streak edition of the Chicago Sun-Times in 23 days, I was blessed to be immersed in innovation work and surrounded by amazing colleagues who inspired me at every turn. When I left my final Chicago newsroom in the fall of 2005 to redesign The Examiner for San Francisco and Washington DC, I felt it was time to go into business for myself and apply the entrepreneurial lessons that I had learned. This was a leap

Visual Editors Budgeting Community PHP programming Non-profit

the last 12 years were unimaginable to me while I was toiling away as an editor in a newsroom. I have been lucky with my timing, and I know it. The discipline and demands of professional visual storytelling are high. Burnout, stress and negative distractions are a present and very real threat. Doing this work at the highest level demands everything you can give. But the rewards for reaching original solutions to difficult problems are worth it. If I were to pass on any wisdom from my 20/20 rear-facing vision, it would be to challenge yourself to keep moving forward. Embrace change, Bring order from chaos and build a reputation as a problem solver. Adopt design thinking methods and apply them to your work and your career so that you can gain and remain in command of your own journey.

Check out Montgomery’s free lessons on mobile storytelling

LUMA FUSION is the first professional video editing app which supports multitrack editing, audio mixing, video keyframing and much more.

Smart Film School Workshops Webinars Courses

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

COVERS WE TO HATE LOVE

L O V E

H A T E

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is the most interesting (if not the most inspiring) subject and character to visualize. Five designers pick their top five favorite covers and explain what make them tick.

Jaap Biemans / NETHERLANDS Art Director, Volkskrant Magazine and Founder of Coverjunkie.com The New York Times Magazine (US) Hot air. That all there is. A synonym for what they A think of the president? It definitely looks good and is intriguing. Rolling Stone (US) How on earth can a human possibly be transformed B into a hurricane and still be recognizable? The Washington Post Magazine (US) For me, this is the most thought-provoking. The C focus goes directly into the hole in the middle, which is enclosed by the image of the flesh. The mouth

becomes an arse? This is not about aesthetics; the imagery is both raw and absurd. It takes guts to do this; it’s about confusion and disorder. The New Yorker (US) A cover about the President of the United States D without showing the President of the United States. That’s brilliant. Placing the logo behind the wall means extra points for creativity. Forbes (US) Trump’s infamous hair turned into a shark fin makes E this cover looks devilish and threatening.

A VISUAL HISTORY OF TRUMP MAGAZINE COVERS The Trump presidency has set many things in motion, almost all of which have been irredeemably dreadful. But one positive to come out of this: It has been an age of fantastic magazine covers across the world, depicting the American president in his many guises. Here’s a rundown of the best covers (with some not-so-good thrown in for balance) compiled by Extra News Feed.

READ FULL STORY

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Vanessa Wyse / CANADA

Former Creative Director, The Grid (defunct) and Founder of Studio Wyse

The New York Times Magazine (US) This will always be one of my favorite Trump covers. A I honestly can’t believe it was over two years ago, and long before it was even a real possibility that Trump would be president. Playing off the rapid rise in attention Trump was getting in the political race and the idea that once all the air was gone, there would be nothing but garbage left behind. Here the art is allowed to speak for itself without the need for words at all. New York (US) This issue hit the stands the week before Trump won the F election but after the debates. For a newsstand magazine to have the audacity to take such a strong stance at this time was impressive. In the image, the fury and anger are palpable. Combine that with Barbara Kruger’s strong style and the resulting cover is bold and a direct reflection of the feeling in New York at the time.

LO UPE

ON SKETCHING “A preliminary sketch is one of the most important parts of my work as an infographic designer. It allows me to develop the ideas quickly and have an overall picture of how the graphic would look before it is finished.” — ADOLFO ARRANZ @adolfux

FOLLOW HIM ON INSTAGRAM

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

C 41 Magazine (ITALY) This is a contemporary photography magazine. This G cover was the first time the publication put a non-photographer on the cover. Japanese artist Kensuke Koike’s piece focuses on Trump’s most recognizable feature, his mouth, in its most recognized position, wide open at full volume. Hillary Clinton’s face may or may not be hiding in the depths of that black hole. California Sunday (US) The team at California Sunday uses a photographic apH proach for all their covers. This one, which doesn’t actually include Trump himself and relies on no coverlines, is so strong. It says a lot with very little. You can feel the defiance, defeat, and frustration in this image, which is by photographer Erin Brethauer. Time (US) What would a round-up of Trump covers be without ilI lustrations from Trump’s most-hated artist, Edel Rodriguez? I love a good illustration series, and I was impressed by the commitment the team had to this idea by revisiting it a second time, months later. The striking duo needs no explanation, as Trump continues his public meltdown.

RADAR

WHY COMIC JOURNALISM IN LATIN AMERICA IS BOOMING Although comic journalism has been practiced for several years in the United States and Europe (where there are even media dedicated entirely to the format) in Latin America it began to strengthen at the beginning of this decade due to the need to tell stories that are complicated to deal with in traditional formats—either because of the difficulty of the investigation or because they deal with very local issues.

READ THE ARTICLE

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Ryan Huddle / US Entertainment Designer at The Boston Globe

The New York Times Magazine (US) It works on many levels. In my opinion, A the best Trump cover ever created. The image speaks louder than any words could. It engages the reader and makes them form their own concussion.

The Washington Post Magazine (US) Again the simplicity gets to the point. C Most illustrations use Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair for the focus. The Post noticed the way Trump speaks and the unique way he moves his mouth. The cover story is all about Trump saying things off the cuff, and the combination of photo and words gets to that in an unconventional way. Time (US) This came out when the entire world was i feeling the same way about Trump. The key to success for this issue was timing and simplicity. Edel Rodriguez has probably done the most cover illustrations of Trump at this point and just nails it on this one.

The New Yorker (US) Simplicity is the key to the success of j this cover. You instantly know that the person in the hole is Trump because of the iconic hair. Even with no text, you know that Trump has said something again that is just making the hole deeper. On the newsstand surrounded by the other magazines, your eye was drawn to the stark cover. Variety (US) The cover Illustration is great. It makes K me laugh every time I see it. You can just picture like this when he is getting ready for his public debut, and the vanity comes across in waves.

THE ILLUSTRATOR WHO SET TRUMP ON FIRE (AND FURY) WATCH THE VIDEO

bit.ly/2oLxzsc

Ever since Edel Rodriguez made his orange-and-yellow depiction of Trump melting down, it has become emblematic. In encore covers for TIME (and for German magazine Der Spiegel), he has repeatedly reinvented the graphic concept to respond to the news cycle.

READ FULL STORY

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

Norbert Kupper / GERMANY Design Consultant and Organizer of the European Newspaper Award

Børsen (DENMARK) This front page came the day after the election. Børsen is a business newspaper around 20 pages and covered the election result. Have you noticed anything peculiar? There’s no headline.

Die Welt Kompakt (GERMANY) Die Welt, a broadsheet paper, has a tabloid edition called Die Welt Kompakt which targets the younger readers. This front page was released on the day of the US election. The bottom text translates: “Is the US facing the biggest break since the Vietnam War?”

Politiken (DENMARK) The caption says: “On Tuesday, the departing president holds his farewell speech in his Chicago hometown to a split nation, with Donald Trump chose a radically different course.” And the headline: Barackxit.

Le Temps (SWITZERLAND) The cover is a wrap-around. The front shows Donald Trumps raising his index finger. The headline at the back says: THE NEW WORLD.

Trouw (NETHERLANDS) De Verdieping is a daily supplement in tabloid format. This front page was published on January 20, 2017. The inside pages also show the element of the seat belt.

TO O LBOX

NEWS DESIGN TRENDS IN EUROPE The result of the 2018 European Newspaper Awards is in and reported the following observations: • The newspaper Saturday edition is transformed into a weekend paper. • Poster-like treatment in the front page. • Continuous experiments in the digital format. • The influx of text-driven news apps. • Those who exploit data journalism stand out from the crowd. • Visual journalism has remained strong.

VIEW THE FULL REPORT

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31 T

Darren Long / HONG KONG Head of Graphics & Magazine Design Editorial, South China Morning Post

The Economist (UK) British illustrator Miles Donovan chose to riff on the famous Banksy artwork of a rioter lobbing flowers for this cover.

Time (US) I love how Time ‘Person of the Year’ continues to be misinterpreted as the publication’s endorsement of the protagonist portrayed. The image they use somehow reminds me of Edward Steichen’s 1903 portrayal of JPMorgan as a cutthroat capitalist, but nobody else seems to have picked up on that, so perhaps it’s an imaginary reference on my part.

This Week in Asia (HONG KONG) I particularly like a cover by my colleague Huy Quoc Truong for This Week in Asia published by South China Morning Post where Trump’s iconic hair says it all.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) I always experience a subversive thrill when a newspaper ditches its front-page template, so I love the Telegraph’s bold cover for their election special.

The New Yorker (US) My all-time favorite Trump cover though is the New Yorker cartoon on the fake Time magazine which the president hung in his golf clubs and Mar-a-Lago. Whatever your politics you simply couldn’t make this presidency up if you tried.

LO UPE

HIGH FIVE: INSTAGRAM Here’s a list Instagram accounts that you need to follow for inspirations as recommended by @levyart (Andrea Levy of The Plain Dealer). “Looking at the NASA site,” she said, “(it) reminds me how small I am. It helps me relax.”

@museedartmodernedeparis @gagosian

@nasahubble

@museeorsay @instagramjapan

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

A virtual space for young visual journalists Text:

Aviva Loeb

SND MEMBERS are a diverse group. We come together from all over the world. And we are at different stages in our careers. Some of us work in print. Some of us work digitally. Some of us do something else entirely. United by a common passion for our work, and goal of strengthening the news design community. As the Membership Director of SND, I recognize how special this makes our organization. It is also my job to make sure all of our members see value in being a part of SND, along with SND.org editor Greicy Mella, SNDCampus editor Nicole Zhu, Social Media coordinator Jenna Kendle, and bloggers Chloe Meister, Clare Ramirez, and Stephanie Hays. I graduated from the University of Vermont in 2015. Being a visual journalist

WANT TO GET INVOLVED? We’re looking for student designers and writers to contribute to the blog. Educators we want to hear from you, too. Through SNDCampus you can share your lessons and wisdom with students around the world. Email me at aviva.loeb@gmail.com.

at a school without a program was a challenge, and I looked to outside resources to supplement my education. I found SND in 2013, and the friends and mentors I made have shaped my early career. SNDCampus is the blog I longed for as a student. This effort from SND will focus exclusively on the needs of our youngest members. It is a space for students within SND. We want to see their work, hear their stories, and help them succeed. The blog is a place where students can learn about the what’s going on in the collegiate design world, get advice from professionals, and connect with peers. We cover topics like, how to get an internship, what to expect at your first SND conference and what’s trending in the industry. And every Friday, Stephanie Hays rounds up the top student work from the week.

SNDCampus most popular stories

TOP SIX SITES FOR DESIGN INSPIRATION

Where to look for ideas, when you’re stuck on a design.

STYLE GUIDE SERIES

A look at how to create a style guide for a publication.

FIVE THINGS TO READ AND SEE THIS WEEK

A weekly series where we round up design articles and student work.

TEN TIPS FOR SUCCEEDING AT AND MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR VISUALS INTERNSHIP

Advice from professionals who work with interns at Gannett, The Star Tribune, Vox, and more.

BEHIND THE VISUALS AT STUDENT PAPERS

A roundtable with design editors at student newspapers across the US.

www.medium.com/sndcampus

WWW.SND.ORG / DESIGN JOURNAL

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

One world. One SND. T EXT & IM AG E S:

Douglas Okasaki

THE INTERNATIONAL side of our Society is one of the aspects of the organization that we should be proud of. We can find SND followers, members, and supporters in the four corners of the world. The Society’s annual creative competitions for print and for digital play a vital role in attracting and connecting with the international community. They have opened floodgates of enthusiasm from our members worldwide. Equally, the chapters in Scandinavia (Region 13) and Spain/Mediterranean (Region 14) also hold their respective annual contests, which have become a tradition in Europe. While a couple of months back, the first-ever SNDLondon was held at the rooftop of the News UK building, bringing together more than 200 participants from the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries from Europe and Asia. Internationally renowned speakers covered topics on innovation and creativity during a full-day event. The UK has been the hub of creativity in the news design industry, and it’s about time for SND to conquer London and organize a gathering of visual storytellers and editorial designers from within and the nearby regions. The response was overwhelming,

ÑH is both a competition and a conference with a broader focus. Both digital and print, we discuss storytelling; share content flow and organization issues; show video, photo, and illustration cases; introduce the best projects of the year. ÑH caters to art directors, news editors, designers, photo editors, copy desk staff, and graphics artists.

with the survey result showing positive feedback in every aspect—from the conference topics down to the quality of speakers. How incredible to witness European designers so enthused about learning and absorbing all the information—just imagine 17 speakers all packed into a day’s schedule! And they were all attentive until the very end, starting from ten in the morning until seven in the evening. Of course, there were breaks, which made it even more challenging to manage. Sara Quinn, SND past president,

J AV I E R E R R E A

ARGENTINA + SPAIN NOVEMBER 2018

ÑH Best of News Design (Spain, Portugal, and Latin America) started out as an exclusive European competition but expanded to include Latin America in 2016. The two annual conferences this year will be held in Madrid and Buepremiosnh.com nos Aires.

MADRID

BUENOS AIRES

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SNDLondon was made possible through the generosity of our sponsors (above). The legendary graphic designer Neville Brody brings the creative spirit high during his keynote presentation (below).

worked hard as the conference organizer in keeping all the speakers in tow and in making sure that the sessions would flow smoothly. It was such a pleasure to have Duncan Mil (Graphic News) and Bill Gaspard (China Daily) served as the hosts and presenters. The networking naturally began during the welcome address until the evening’s farewell party which brought the speakers and the attendees closer together while overlooking the historic London scenery. The remarkable success of this event was made possible through the collaboration of SND and its media partners—Danny Wilkins of News UK, Christian Erades of Maps4News, and the folks from Graphic News (Jane Brodie, Fiona Roberts, and Jennifer Bermudez). Hong Kong beckons And here’s another first. Next month, the inaugural SND Infographic Summit and Workshop will take place in Hong Kong from April 13 to 15. Darren Long of South China Morning Post (and current SND 19 Regional Director) will spear-

head the event. The hosting venue will be at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong. The objective of this conference is to bring together various professionals, share experiences, and discuss the growing roles of visual storytelling. The list of speakers includes Javier Errea (Malofiej), Alberto Lucas Lopez (National Geographic), Sung-hwan Jang (Yonhap News Agency), Jane Pong (Financial Times), Simon Scarr (Reuters), John Saeki (France Presse-Asia Pacific), Yue Qiu (Bloomberg), Minjung Kim (The Wall Street Journal), and freelance cartoonist Harry Harrison. The South China Morning Post’s awarding winning team (Adolf Arranz, Marcelo Duhalde, Marco Hernandez, Pablo Robles) will conduct a two-day workshop after the Summit. Participants are expected to do hands-on infographic and data visualization exercises. The speakers from the Summit will also serve as a panel of critics during the feedback session. Registration is still open, but seats are limited. See the links below.

This year, SNDS has teamed up with Design Matters in Copenhagen for a spectacular design conference with speakers from Netflix, Google, Instagram, IDEO, Spotify, LinkedIn, NYT, and more. There will be newsrelated presentations as well as cutting-edge presentations, and a cozy meeting area for SNDS members plus the popular Award Show presenting the Best of Scandinavian News Design from this year’s contest. F L E M M I N G H V I D T F E L D T, S N D 1 3 R E G I O N A L D I R E C TO R COPENHAGEN

DENMARK

/ 26 - 27 SEPTEMBER 2018

SNDS (SND Scandinavia) holds its annual competition for Scandinavian newspapers, as well as its own conference. This year’s event will be held in Copenhagen. SND members will get discount of 15 percent when signing up for the conference. snds.org

H O N G KO N G

HONG KONG

hksnd.com

/ 13 - 15 APRIL 2018

The first Asia Pacific SND Infographic Summit and Workshop will be co-hosted by the South China Morning Post and University of Hong Kong. Hurry, register now!

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

20 18 S N D L I F ETI M E AC H I E VE M E NT

GERALD MARZORATI ON

Janet

I HAVE KNOWN HER

for too long, and so what I have to say is something that Janet has heard me say before: She never was a magazine art director, or creative director, not to me. I mean, sure, to graphic design organizations, and the folks who belong to graphic design organizations, and the officials who vote on and present the awards that graphic design organizations extend to art directors: Yes, sure, she was an art director. And I have no idea where she finds the room to store all of those awards, those gold and silver awards she won so many of. I stopped going to the awards dinners with her because she was always getting up during those dinners and marching off to the stage to be presented with another of those awards.

I keep up with a lot of magazines. I’m kind of a magazine junkie. I like the European magazines a lot because I think that there’s a sort of less commercial way of using images and typography…. I also spend a lot of time in the galleries and museums just looking at art and photography because I think that art really is at the forefront of a lot of creative ideas and that it really helps us in the magazines.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

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ART DIRECTION

ILLUSTRATION: Ramachandan Babu

roelich No, to me, Janet was first and foremost a journalist. I’d worked in magazines for years before I worked with Janet, and never bumped into anyone like her in an art department. For starters, she read the newspaper every morning. I mean, really read it, like I read it. But more than that, she understood how journalism works. How it’s a lot of people working together, under deadline pressure, to make a story as true and fair, as enticing and engaging, as that story can be. It was all to be at the service of the story. She read every manuscript as thoroughly as I did. She had comments about manuscripts that had nothing to do with how they should be illustrated or photographed or presented. And when she turned her mind eventually to how a given story would be presented—layout, type treatment, accompanying art, and so on—her understanding of the story was always what guided her. What she was doing—her creativity, her decision-making—was not capital-A Art. She trained as

a painter and lived in SoHo back when it was still actually SoHo and made Art. But she knew getting a magazine out was not quite Art. It wasn’t Art and it required different sorts of habits of mind than those required to make Art. Things moved fast at a magazine; you needed to be impatient. Journalism was not interior, like Art, but about things out there; you needed to be to be curious about the world, have arguments with the world, be fair to events and people in that world that some part of you who wasn’t a journalist didn’t feel like being all that fair too. Janet had all that. And she had a way of finding young designers who had an inkling of that and bringing them to work for her and with her. She made them into journalists, too. Like her, they came to delight not only in their craft but in the stories that their craft was in the service of. A number of them are art directors themselves now. But they’re not really art directors. They’re journalists. And they, like me, have Janet to thank.

Janet Froelich is the former Creative Director of The New York Times Magazine. Under her direction, it won more than 60 gold and silver awards from SND, the Art Directors Club (ADC), and the Society of Publication Designers. She was the 2006 recipient of the ADC Hall of Fame Award and has served on the faculty of The School of Visual Arts design programs.

Gerald Marzorati was the editor of the New York Times Magazine from 2003 - 2010.

HALL OF FEMMES

“Editorial design was, until thirty years ago, more or less male dominated,” Steven Heller wrote, “but women were not a minority (Lillian Baseman and Ruth Ansel have already been recognized in this series). Women held the reins of many important magazines. Ansel was, herself, art director of the The New YorkTimes Magazine during 1970s. So, to segregate Froelich by virtue of gender is not an entirely fair assessment of her place in the art directorial pantheon.”

DURATION: 42:48 MINUTES

bit.ly/2CQwfck

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

20 18 S N D L I F ETI M E AC H I E VE M E NT

ALBERTO CAIRO ON

John

WHAT COULD I SAY

about John that hasn’t been spoken or written already? After all, he’s been one of the most influential news graphics designers in history. His modesty makes him hate reading that. Allow me to share a personal story with you.

I began my career in infographics back in the summer of 1997. I was in the last year of my B.A. in Journalism, and I hadn’t been able to land an internship in any radio station— my intent when choosing journalism as a career was to do radio programs—because my grades weren’t great, to say the least. I was aimless, not knowing what to do with my life after graduation. The gods of fortune decided to intervene for reasons that I’ve been unable to fathom. One of my professors at University of Santiago de

John Grimwade teaches at the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University.

People sometimes think that being simple means that you’re not going to be telling them anything. But I think more about the beauty of simplicity.... I have to try to persuade them to see the beauty of that solution.... You can take these things down and down and down until the most exquisitely clear statement.... It’s the clarity that you’re trying to hit actually.... It’s simplicity to tell, to get the information across.

WATCH HIS TALK

bit.ly/2HLrmoD

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INFORMATION GRAPHIC

Each dot represents the individual Prof. Grimwade has influenced over the years

To his legion of fans in the infographic world, there can only be one John Grimwade

Grimwade Ratio

THE ULTIMATE GRIMWADE GIN & TONIC RECIPE

1:4

{

ILLUSTRATION: Ramachandan Babu

Compostela (Spain), Marita Otero, got a request from a local newspaper, La Voz de Galicia (LVdG). Its graphics department wanted an intern that could write a bit and who had demonstrated a certain intuitive sense for design—I can draw a tiny bit, thanks to the many afternoons spent copying comic books, and to my dad, who taught me basic sketching techniques. Marita recommended me. I was scared to death. I knew just a little about infographics thanks to an elective class I had taken with her. But I knew nothing about color, type, composition, or any of the other elementary tenets of visual design. I just had curiosity and willingness to work my ass off to learn. The gods of fortune were generous again, so I had excellent teachers at LVdG, people such as Xoan G., Manuela Mariño, Pablo Manzano, Álvaro Valiño—now doing graphics for National Geo-

Nolet’s

Schweppes Tonic Water

A wedge of lime

}

graphic—and many others. I’m where I am today thanks to them. I also had John. How so? After all, at the time John was graphics editor at Condé Nast Traveler in New York, and I was in A Coruña, Spain, many thousands of miles and an entire ocean away. The graphics team at LVdG treasured some of the books of the Malofiej infographics competition, which had begun in the early 90s. I remember some of the designers encouraging me to browse through their pages and to copy from the best. Copying not in the sense of plagiarizing, but in the sense of mimicking, at least in part, the style of those masters: the way they told stories visually, their layouts, their color palettes, their illustration tricks, the manner in which they built charts, graphs, and maps. One of LVdG’s designers told me while pointing out a few examples on the pages of those old Malofiej volumes (I’m paraphrasing here): “These graph-

Grimwade’s top five recommended websites to follow INFOGRAPHICS

5wvelascoblog.com

visualoop.com

DATA VIZ

flowingdata.com

DESIGN INSPIRATIONS

fastcodesign.com

thisiscolossal.com

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

I NFO G R A PH I C :

Nigel Holmes

JOHNGRIMWADE.COM/BLOG Grimwade started Infographics For The People in August 2016. Since then he has posted more than 150 design-related articles and visual curiosities. TIM GOHEEN, Director of School of Visual Communications at Ohio University, picks his all-time favorites. “It is not a blog for data visualization or infographics nerds,” Goheen says, “but it’s exactly, as the title states, a blog for everyone. They’re brilliantly insightful, historical, educational, and entertaining posts that one could teach a class just using Grimwade’s blog. In fact, I make a point of adding a link of his blog to my course syllabi as a recommended read.”

FERNANDO BAPTISTA IN OHIO A sculpture and infographics workshop bit.ly/2CH8Mdu

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ics are by John Grimwade. He’s really good. You should try to get inspiration from him.” As anybody familiar with the history of visual arts or design can tell you, we all begin by copying the people we admire, even if we don’t always recognize it. And copy I did! I don’t have any of my infographics from those years, although if you ever visit LVdG’s historical archive, you may be able to see them. They are embarrassingly bad, needless to say, but a handful of them also have a feature: they shamelessly imitate John’s characteristic drawing style, particularly his isometric perspective infographics, his annotation techniques, his thoughtful color palettes, and his elegant icons. I failed miserably to create anything as good as even John’s worst infographics, but by trying hard I learned valuable lessons. To this day, every semester I tell my students to go to John’s website, navigate through its content, and learn from him by distilling what makes his work so great. This will help them develop their own personal styles later on. As the saying goes, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. John and I later met in person at the Malofiej Infographics Summit in Pamplona, Spain. He doesn’t know it, but he taught me, and many others throughout the years, another important lesson: the higher your standing in a profession becomes, the kinder and more considerate your treatment of others must be, particularly those who are taking their first steps, but not only. John has never expressed this principle explicitly, but he has demonstrated it through action. If you’re a beginner in news data visualization or infographics, and you cross paths with John at any conference, talk to him. You’ll be struck by his down-to-earth demeanor, his openness, humor, and willingness to help anybody wanting to make a dent in this field. If you show him your work, he’ll be generous with his time and provide honest, helpful,

SIZE COMPARISON

and positive criticism. If you ask him for career advice, he’ll respond. When he was still at Condé Nast, you could email him if you were going to be in NYC, and he’d offer a tour of the building. That’s an attitude that I’ve also done my best to copy from John. I’ve failed often, but I think that I’ve become better at it, always keeping him in mind as a goal. The reason is that there are certain people in the field of visualization—particularly folks who wrote books decades ago and struggle to remain relevant—who have egos that aren’t proportional to their true influence. They are nasty to newcomers, uptight, self-important, pretentious, and display hostility to any dialogue that may falsify their sententious pontification.

You’ll be struck by his down-to-earth demeanor, his openness, humor, and willingness to help anybody wanting to make a dent in this field. When folks like that see something they don’t like, they mock it and call it names (chart junk!), instead of trying to understand why people make the mistakes they make, remembering that they themselves made those same mistakes in the past, and offering constructive advice based on that experience. You can be very critical and very kind at the same time, though. It just requires humility, empathy, and awareness of your own shortcomings. We’d all do a better service to the news graphics and data visualization community if we strive to behave not like the few curmudgeons who have plagued us for so long and, instead, do our best to be a bit more like John. He showed the way many years ago, and he keeps doing it to this day. John, I know you’ll read these words, and you’ll loathe me for embarrassing you. I couldn’t care less. You deserve them. Thanks so much, my friend.

THE DAWN OF DIGITAL

Alberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami.

VISUAL CONCEIT

Side-by-side visualizations

Computer infographics arrive on the scene

Creative visual solutions by Adonis Durado

bit.ly/2ERD3Zf

bit.ly/2EMD3xD

bit.ly/2F5hnvM

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

I NFO G R A PH I C :

Xaquin Gonzales

All of John’s nightmares about dataviz in one chart

The d ata is

This PURPOSEDLY

COMPLICATED KEY

ma ppe du sin gp ola r 30

... the steeper the angle of these lines, relative to the natural curvature of the circle, the higher the saturation ...

30 0

The farther the dot is from the center, the higher the hue ...

co or di n

a er in bett oks g lo hin ryt ve ee us ca 60 be es at

instructs you on how to read it (just pretend it helps, all right?)

This is a data representation —as nonsensical as it gets— of the HSV values of a diagram that made many of us turn to infographics. In plane English: it’s a graphic about a graphic that made us love graphics. Guessed which one? No? http://bit.ly/2ClfZQA

270

circle

0 50 180

Planes Ocean

Sky

Land

Oh, look, here’s a more effective chart of the same data: John’s diagram uses these colors. You should know it by now.

... and the ... well ... (this is all pretty arbitrary anyway) ... the length of the lines display whatever the v stands for —randomized twice to give the data representation more expressiveness.

I left this italic annotation here because it worked fine on a similar-looking data visualization and I was pretty sure nobody would notice anyway. Also, because of ‘horror vacui’

And a red line! MADE WITH LOVE BY ROI’S DAD

PARENTING ADVICE

ON THE ROAD

SKETCHING INFOGRAPHICS

A visual guide to baby care

A less-than-serious review of highway signs

Hand-drawn explanations by Adolfo Arranz

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bit.ly/2ETqvRb

bit.ly/2qxl3iM

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IN HIS OWN WAY,

MIGUEL URABAYEN was a Renaissance man: he had a deep curiosity about a variety of things that had apparently no relation to each other. He was neither a brainy researcher nor an orthodox scholar. He wasn’t an expert in every field, but he inquired about everything, and the minute you dropped your guard, he uttered his peculiar expression—tas, tas—while he would clear the land, draw in the air, and find the right place and the right time. Or spot the mistake that everybody had missed.

In 2009, Miguel Urabayen was the recipient of SND Lifetime Achievement with a citation in recognition of “his work teaching about news infographics and visuals as key storytelling elements.”

READ HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

Miguel was also a hard nut to crack. His mind was a bit of an encyclopedia and his spirit, in an endless pursuit of knowledge. He was just like his uncle Felix, the novelist, or his father Leoncio, a professor and pioneer of human geography in Navarre, a proud and autonomous province in Northern Spain. The three of them were remarkable leftist, agnostic, and republican men opposing Spanish dictator Francisco Franco; perhaps not quite revolutionary, but never giving to brown-nosing or being complacent either. Their character was reserved, modest, rather indifferent to praise or affection, and stubborn as a mule. All three were real Navarrans.

TEXT :

Javier Errea

M ARC H 1 2

1926

National Prize of the Circle of Cinematographic Writers

1970

Medal of the Circle of Cinematographic Writers

Professor of Comparative Press at University of Navarra until 1989

1971

1972

Director of the weekly paper ‘Norte Deportivo’ until 1978

RIP #URABAYEN

1985

2004

Visiting Professor at The Poynter Institute until 1999

Teobaldo Prize for his journalistic work

2009

SND Lifetime Achievement Award

2017

JA N UARY 3

2018

Each and every one of those features is essential to know and understand Miguel Urabayen’s career as a film critic and his passion for World War II, which earned him a prestigious byline in Diario de Navarra, a regional newspaper. He may have been less well-known for spearheading the teaching of design and image in Spanish journalism schools, but I am not exaggerating how famous he was in the international academic and professional worlds. The Society for News Design awarded him The Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009—its most important award—“in

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recognition of his work teaching about news infographics and visuals as key storytelling elements.” Young Miguel grew up surrounded by the maps and superb illustrated magazines to which his father introduced him, especially France’s Science et Monde and L’Illustration, as well as his favorite, Britain’s The Illustrated London News. Even before learning to read he plunged himself into those pages, withdrawing his mind from the gray postwar Pamplona. Right there the seed was planted for his Comparative Press class, which introduced some of us 40 years later to newspapers like Le Monde and Libération. From the timeline that summarizes Miguel Urabayen’s long life in infographics, I would highlight three dates in strict chronological order—just as he would have liked it. The first one was an indistinct day in 1970. I was going to mention earlier in this column that Urabayen, who reviewed and judged innumerable graphics, never drew a single one during his 91-year long life. But that wouldn’t be entirely true, and he would not forgive me for such inaccuracy. In fact, he did make one that year, and it even ran in one of Pamplona’s newspapers. Miguel was part of the lobbying group to build an airport for his city at Noáin, a few miles south. The editorial staff did not have any visuals about the project, but Miguel had the airport blueprint. “I drew by hand a very simple thing, nothing worthwhile,” he once said. Tracking down that diagram is now a must. The second is a day in 1982, when he visited the Tiempo Argentino newsroom, in Buenos Aires, after Pablo Sirvén, one of his former students at Universidad de Navarra, invited him. As soon as he arrived, he began to look through the newspaper. “Who has done this?” he suddenly said aloud when he found a map taking up al-

Urabayen was also a wellrespected Spanish film critic

most a full page. He nodded and opened his eyes in awe. The author was Alejandro Malofiej, a cartographer who worked at a corner with his easel, brushes and tracing sheets. Miguel approached him in praise, but he was also quick to point out an error: the battleship ‘New Jersey’ was represented with the silhouette of a frigate. They became friends on the spot. They never met in person again, but they did keep in touch by phone or mail. Most of all, Urabayen was instrumental in making the work of that anonymous cartographer to transcend his premature death. Years later the most important news infographics competition and congress in the world, taking place annually in Pamplona, was named after Malofiej. As it often happens, people who are keen for money and fame take the spotlight from oddballs like Miguel and Alejandro. This left them with a

DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

bit of a bad aftertaste. “I have the feeling of always being late for everything everywhere,” he once confided to me. The third date in Miguel’s timeline was Friday, March 15, 2013. On that day, he welcomed at his home, at Castillo de Maya street, Nigel Holmes and John Grimwade, two of the living legends of the infographics world. They were in Pamplona for the Malofiej Awards 21st Edition. By then, the former professor was no longer teaching at the university. Holmes and Grimwade had a bite earlier at the Savoy to make time and rang the doorbell at exactly half-past three o’clock, as Urabayen was extremely punctual. The man who opened the door was not worn down, but an 87-year old boy craving for information. He let them in, and without further courteous delay, he showed them numerous books from his extensive collection and started asking them the questions that he had prepared, one for each volume. The Outline of History by H. G. Wells; The Best of Eagle edited by Marcus Morris; Tank, A History of the Armored Fighting Vehicle by Kenneth Macksey and John H. Bachelor; and a 1966 issue of the Sunday Times Magazine. He had only half an hour to squeeze the

PHOTO: Miguel Ángel Barón

In 2013, John Grimwade and Nigel Holmes visited Urabayen in his house in Pamplona. PHOTO: Javier Errea

juice out of that talent gathered at his home as if by a miracle. And it so happened that Miguel whisked from one map to another and yet another, while the two British guests were looking at him in admiration and doing their best to pass the exam and save face. Almost five years have passed since then, and in that time Urabayen published dozens of more stories in Diario de Navarra and continued to duly contribute his part to the Malofiej infographics yearbook, that SND publishes annually. He left a voice message on my answering machine the day before Christmas Eve. He told me he had an article for the yearbook that we will present this coming March. Translated by Cristóbal Edwards

RADAR

TO O LB OX

JOHN MAEDA’S DESIGN IN TECH REPORT 2018

DESIGNING CHATBOT CONVERSATIONS

Today’s most beloved technology products and services balance design and engineering in a way that perfectly blends form and function. Businesses started by designers have created billions of dollars of value, and design’s role in the tech industry continues to evolve. John Maeda will provide a data-driven examination of the intersection of design and technology and its implications for business.

READ & WATCH THE REPORT

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The hardest part on designing a bot is conversation flow. Your users have a specific task to complete using your bot, but there are many paths that they can take to achieve it. After talking with a lot of designers we found out that they were using external tools to create mind maps that would showcase different paths that users can take.

READ THE FULL REPORT

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BLACK EYE

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Roger Black

Billionaire news

here was relief and a little suspicion when the news came that bio-med entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong was buying the Los Angeles Times. Relief, because it gives hope to readers and staffers that this great news organization will be saved. Suspicion, because billionaire. Soon-Shiong is the richest doctor in the country, and, if the negative press is any indication, maybe too smart for his own good. But there is reason to hope for the best. In a letter to staffers, he wrote: I have been a longtime admirer of your work. During the last several months, you’ve shown that despite many distractions, you continued to produce world-class journalism. We will continue to embrace change, new technologies and different ways of distributing news and information.

The best example of a billionaire benefactor is Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post. Soon after buying the paper, he strode into the newsroom to find a designer who could work with him on a concept for a mobile app. He grabbed Joey Marburger, which must have terrified Joey. The result was a fresh, polished advance in story-based news presentation. Bezos’s move inspired his counterpart in China, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, to buy the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Ma has not turned around the central government’s effort to wind down Hong Kong’s principle of “one nation,

two systems,” even if we wanted to. But he has turned around the SCMP. He lowered the paywall to let in more readers. He put needed resources into journalism and design. And, yes, he got a new mobile app.

***

The first barons came from the days when everyone understood the expression “Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Some left behind dynasties that have endured, like the Hearsts, the Newhouses, and the Coxes. But most of the 20th-century dynasties sold out. In LA, it was the Chandlers’ turn in 2000, when Google was just a search engine. The price, for the whole Times Mirror chain, was about $7 billion. The Taylors had sold the Boston Globe to The New York Times in 1993 for a cool billion—twice what Soon-Shiong is paying for the LA Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Bancrofts sold the Wall Street Journal (and Dow Jones) in 2007 for five times that ($5 billion) to Rupert Murdoch, who ain’t letting go of it in his own sale to Disney. Ironically, before tronc (Tronc, Inc.) unloaded the LA Times, it bought the New York Daily News, reuniting the dailies once owned by the Tribune family’s rival cousins, Robert McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson. Katherine Graham’s granddaughter and the last publisher of the Post, Katherine Weymouth, said at the time of the sale: “If journalism is the mission, given the pressures to cut costs and make profits, maybe [a publicly traded company] is not the best place for the Post.” She also said, “It’s much like

M U ST G O

A TYPE AND DESIGN CONFERENCE TYPE, a magazine for people curious about fonts, will hold a one-day conference in New York on May 25, 2018, devoted to the typography, photography, and illustration from the magazine’s first 50 years. Meet the people who made it, and hear how they did it. Speakers include Baron Wolman, Christopher Austopchuk, Jodi Peckman, Joe Hutchinson, John Williams, Karen Mullarkey, Kory Kennedy, Laurie Kratochvil, Melanie Ress, and Roger Black. Tickets is at $99 (SND members gets 20% discount) if you register before March 25, 2018. Email skomives@snd.org to get the promo code.

PURCHASE THE TICKET HERE

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

my great-grandfather, who bought the Post in 1933 with his own personal money and for many years lost dollars out of his own pocket.... We may be going back to an era where there will be people with deep pockets and deep resources who will be committed to journalism.”

***

If you follow this story, you might point out that the Los Angeles Times did okay as part the Tribune Company—in the beginning. I was there, part-time, starting a redesign in 1999 when Michael Parks was an editor. The next year the Tribune Company brought in the great John Carroll as editor. He had been my client at Baltimore Sun, another Times-Mirror paper. Carroll quickly cleaned up the ethical mess the previous publisher had created. There had been a stupid conflict-of-interest involving the new Disney Hall which was exacerbated by Otis Chandler sending an acidic memo to the staff. Carroll reorganized the news-room noiselessly. Desks disappeared in the middle of the night, but the furniture was moved, so no one quite noticed. He made the redesign happen, hiring Joe Hutchinson from Baltimore, who put together a great team. One senior member, Michael Whiting, is somehow still there. This was a great time to be at the LA Times, despite the slowly dawning realization the heyday of newspapers was quickly fading. Carroll stayed for five years, battling with the owners in Chicago, and winning the trust of the staff as well as a lot of Pulitzers. He’d brought Dean Baquet (pronounced bah-KAY, I was carefully told) from The New York Times, and Baquet succeeded him as editor. But not for long. A year later, he quit over newsroom budgets. And Baquet went back to The New York Times, something that was never done, and is now, of course, their executive editor. James O’Shea, a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter and editor, took over. It was figured, wrongly, that he would be a mouthpiece for the

But he left the company in shambles. Surely the ice cube was already melting in the parking lot, but Zell sprayed kerosene all over the place and struck a match. owners. But then Sam Zell bought the whole Tribune company for some $8 billion, saddling it with debt. O’Shea quit for the same reason as Baquet—money for the newsroom. I had held on in LA on as a consultant for four editors, enjoying the city, watching the downtown gentrify, seeing friends and places I knew from the 70s, but O’Shea let me go. I don’t hold it against him. How could I, considering the arrival of Zell? Zell is a fundamentally real estate tycoon—like Zuckerman, who owned the New York Daily News for nearly 25 years. But as a billionaire attracted to the idea of owning newspapers, Zuckerman is a hero. Zell is a villain. It was Art Director Michael Whitley who headed off Zell in Los Angeles. Zell had appointed Lee Abrams to oversee radical redesigns of all the Tribune papers. “The changes we proposed to make

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for the Times were adjustments to the design we wanted to make anyway,” Whitley says. There were new section headings and a larger, inlined logo. “Abrams was unimpressed. But, I said that something more radical was not what our readers wanted—and not in our best interest as a business. The publisher and the editor backed him up. “We proceeded with the design we believed in.” Zell was gone two years later. But he left the company in shambles. Surely the ice cube was already melting in the parking lot, but Zell sprayed kerosene all over the place and struck a match. As the barons have the power of the ink barrel, reporters have the power of the pen. O’Shea put the ugly story down in a book, The Deal from Hell. Anyone who read it had to conclude that the Tribune Company was a dying patient in a crowded hospital. O’Shea’s conclusion that the internet is not killing newspapers. Incompetence is. Sadly, it is probably both.

The UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media is keeping track of who owns what.

bit.ly/2I5lF5g

est donor to the Trump campaign. In Britain, the fourth Viscount Rothermere may not be a pro-Nazi like the first Viscount, but he is happy to keep the Daily Mail very conservative and a little trashy. Still, he financed a successful push onto the web. Some may have misgivings about Bezos’s colossal retail empire while reading the Post as we wait for the drones to bring us our Whole Foods delivery. But we can’t deny that the paper has improved. He turned it’s benighted local D.C. news focus, into a global map with Washington in the center. There is more reporting, all over the world, and more analysis, with great veterans like David Ignatius still in place. The opinion section is sparkling. The Grahams shied away from the digital side after early losses, but Bezos has dragged the paper into his world and paid the bills. Most of these billionaires, like Carlos Slim (an investor in The New York Times) or Warren Buffet (who bought Media General), genuinely want newspapers to survive and prosper—in print or online. Among their motives: Preserving freedom of the press. Shining a light on government and business. Saving an essential profession. And telling some great stories.

***

There is a risk of putting too much trust in the billionaires. But we can hope that they support enough news organizations with their reporters, editors, designers, and photographers—to keep the craft alive until we can find a sustainable business model.

***

Now we see a new class of press baron: The billionaire who is not getting into it just for the money. They already have money. There was a bump in tronc’s stock after the LA Times announcement, and I checked Dr. Soon-Shiong’s holdings. With over a million shares he made roughly $15 million that day, just a fraction of the purchase price. Pocket change. Money is not his motive. That does not mean these guys do not share with the original barons the same ambition to gain power and influence. Nor does it make them liberals. At least one, Sheldon Anderson was the larg-

Roger Black was the Chief Art Director of The New York Times (1984-1985). The typography style books he devised for the Los Angeles Times (1999-2005) and the Washington Post (2009) are still in use.

TO O LBOX

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DESIGN JOURNAL / SPRING 2018

SND’s call for solidarity I’M HEARTBROKEN over the news of my friend, Fevzi Yazici, a brave and talented visual journalist from Istanbul, Turkey. When I was fortunate enough to judge the SND World’s Best Designed Newspapers, one of my judging partners was Fevzi, and I got to know him fairly well. He was passionate about his country and was sick with worry about Turkish President Recep Erdogan, the fascist despot rising to power, and the steps he was taking to destroy the country’s basic freedoms. Fevzi was the design director of the award-winning newspaper Zaman, and among the brave group of journalists trying to shed light on the despotism. For this, the Turkish government ordered the closure of Zaman in 2016 on suspicion of overthrowing Erdogan, while most of its workers were detained while awaiting trial, including Fevzi. On February 16, 2018, Fevzi was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, including 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. Guilty of telling the story of growing fascism in his country. I might seem over-wrought sometimes in both my appreciation for the courage it takes to expose abuse among elected officials and the fear I feel about economics or violence taking away the public’s right to know how they are governed. Fevzi and his co-workers were trying to stand up for what was right for the people of Turkey, and he felt that public service would offer him some protection. But when the citizens are too cowed by an authoritarian leader, or too frightened by threats (real or conjured) of terrorism or war to hold dear to individual liberties, they sacrifice the brave. Fevzi was sacrificed, and I feel pity for his family, and for his country.

AN ASSAULT TO PRESS FREEDOM On July 27, 2016, Turkish authorities issued a warrant for the detention of Fevzi Yazici, Design Director of Zaman. He was charged with being a follower of an exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accuses of maintaining a terrorist organization and ‘parallel state structure’, as well as masterminding the failed military coup on July 2016. As of February 2018, there are 73 incarcerated Turkish journalists, according to cpj.org.

T E XT:

Tracy Collins President, SND Foundation

We support a free press so the truth can come out. The truth about whether a border guard was killed by illegal immigrants or by a fall. The truth of whether whispers about abuses committed by an official doctor for US Gymnastics are real, and whether they’re widespread. The examples are endless. And yet there are fewer and fewer of them because there are fewer journalists to do the investigating. If the free press dies from economic strangulation, we’re the worse for it because of the loss of protection. I don’t say this to try to safeguard my short-term future. I’ve had a career I’ve loved and am passionate about, but it’s in its last ten years (economics willing). I say this to protect the freedoms of my children and their children. I hope you’ll support a free press throughout your lives. When I first started my career, a veteran took me to task for a story I edited in which the writer had said the president had lied—even though incontrovertibly it had been proven that he had lied. "You can’t say that about the president of the United States in the newspaper," he said. Thankfully, that’s not true, and we are a better country because we’re able to acknowledge when our highest leaders tell lies. When your leaders are despots who don’t want to be held publicly accountable, telling the truth about far more egregious—and publicly witnessed—transgressions can be twisted into treason. And the brave journalists who tried to tell it might face decades in solitary confinement, in the most bitter of ironies: For treason, when trying to save a country they so desperately love. Solidarity, Fevzi!

J O I N T H E C O N V E R SAT I O N

LAST SHOT

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CARTOON: Niño Jose Heredia

FACEBOOK .COM/FREEDOMFORFEVZI

What will bind us to each other is not the fear of imprisonment and never-ending threats but peace and freedom of thought. What has been massacred is not only these prominent writers whose works have been happily read and debated by the public for 40 years. — Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk condemning the aggravated life sentences of journalists

O U R CO N TR I B UTOR S I N TH I S I SSUE If work didn’t get in the way of life, Ramachandra Babu would rather be a full-time artist than an editorial illustrator. His work in Gulf News (UAE) received awards from SND, Malofiej, and WAN-IFRA. Bonita Burton is the Executive Editor of The Villages Daily Sun, America’s fastest-growing daily. An alumni of Presstime’s 20 Under 40 list of young newsroom leaders, she has directed print and digital innovations in newsrooms large and small. She served on the SND board for nine years is an SND past vice president. Tobias Frere-Jones is one of the world’s premier type designers, creating numerous typefaces that news designers use every day, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, and Retina, across mobile, tablet, desktop and print news products.

Award-winning illustrator Victor Sanjinez García works at Diario El Comercio in Perú. He is a children’s book illustrator, a graphic humorist, and a former teacher. Xaquín Gonzales is an awardwinning Galician visual journalist. He led the visual team at The Guardian—a cross-disciplinary, 40-person experiment of graphics, interactive, multimedia, and photo editors. He has worked at National Geographic, The New York Times, and El Mundo. His most recent obsession: emotional connections in data-driven visual storytelling and sous-vide cooking. Niño Jose Heredia is Filipino illustrator based in the UAE and works as a senior designer of Gulf News. His editorial cartoons and illustrations received honors from the SND and World Press Cartoon.

SNDHONGKONG INFOGRAPHIC SUMMIT APRIL 13-15, 2018

SND Region 19 — Asia, South-Pacific is delighted to announce SNDHK2018, Hong Kong’s inaugural international infographics event. Keynote speakers, Alberto Lucas from National Geographic and Javier Errea, the coordinator of the World Summit and Malofiej Infographics Awards, will be joined by luminaries from Reuters, Financial Times, AFP, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Infographics lab 203 and South China Morning Post on Friday, April 13. A two-day infographics workshop co-hosted by the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre on April 14-15, provides a unique opportunity to learn from some of the brightest minds in the business.

ORGANIZED BY

Nigel Holmes has written six books on aspects of information design, including, Wordless Diagrams and Nigel Holmes on Information Design. He was the recipient of SND Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Robb Montgomery is a visual storytelling and innovation expert based in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Smartphone Video Storytelling and has been producing media development projects on design thinking, multimedia, and mobile video journalism since 2005. Known for his international reputation as an award-winning editorial and visual identity designer, Saulo Santana is the art director of Axel Springer in Germany. He is formerly the art director of a daily paper Correio Braziliense and the sport daily Marca.