Announcing Designorati: News Design

What’s black and white and read all over?

In my career, I’ve done every type of printed and digital design and layout. Packaging, ad creative, POS, identity, catalogs, directories, magazines (including full forms-based design and makeovers), logos, etc. and so forth—you name it, I’ve done it. I’m happy with my body of work (for the most part), and managed to keep a good balance among the types of creative work I’ve produced as freelancer, in-house creative, and agency principal. Newspapers, however, I never got enough of.

I never worked on a daily or weekly paper, although I have designed small monthly trade association papers (bar associations, mostly, which aren’t as stuffy about their newsletter design as one might expect) and helped redefine and redesign several recognizable military papers. I have studied newspaper design and know a good deal about it, but haven’t employed that knowledge nearly as much as I’d like.

Designing for newspapers has always fascinated me—with the exception of flyers and direct mail, no other significant printed communication form is so readily discarded and transitory. Today’s revolutionary supplement design is, pardon the pun, old news in 24 hours. Moreover, newspaper designs can’t be changed sporadically; even migrating typefaces is a drawn out and risky process. With magazines, major design revisions can be executed in half a year; if handled properly, they can even roll out with a single issue. Not so newspapers. It takes patience, all the while recognizing that, more so than any other form of design, readable, digestable copy is the absolute highest priority. Maintaining readers’ sense of permanency, stability, and comfort through consistency and predictability in the design is a close second.

News design is a highly specialized and rigorously disciplined field of visual communication. It requires tremendous skill with typography and grids, a great sense of organization, and a deep understanding of how human beings read and process data. Writing about the field is even more demanding because it requires mastery of the design skills and the ability to communicate effectively—writing the words, not just copyfitting them.

There’s a need for Designorati:News Design. Few websites exist to discuss one of the least glamorous yet most demanding of all the visual communications fields. Those sites and resources that do exist are excellent, but there is room—and a need—for more such resources.

Many times I’ve looked in the developmental waiting room of Designorati, wishing I had the time and bandwidth to activate Designorati:News Design. It was the first Topic I built on Designorati, including its design, color scheme, and typography. It has been at the top of the “Most Needed / Most Wanted Topics” list since the first day I began planning Designorati, although it has gone through a few names, including D:Publications, D:Periodicals, and the wholly unweildly D:Magazines & Newspapers.

In addition to a number of hats I wear at Designorati, I am the editor of D:Graphic Design and D:Creative Culture. Both are, of course, dear to my heart and well within my experiences as a creative and writer. Yet it’s Designorati:News Design that has always most intrigued my passion to write and edit. Ever since I left Weblogs, Inc., where I had created and built one of the most recognizable creative website brands, the Magazine Design Weblog (defunct since my resignation from that company), I have missed writing about the news design and periodical communication form. D:News Design was my replacement for the Magazine Design Weblog, the opportunity to do it entirely my way, without the internal concerns of a built-for-sell network that included such diverse non-design brands as TUAW.com, Engadget, and AutoBlog.

As Designorati rocketed toward launch in September 2005, it became regrettably clear to me that I simply did not have time to give D:News Design the attention and care it truly deserved. That Topic addresses one of the world’s most demanding creative disciplines, and whomever writes and edits D:News Design must be absolutely focussed on it. With time demands of being Designorati’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and head coffee snorfer, I can’t be that person right now.

D:News Design was always intended to be my baby, but my regret that it cannot be is far overshadowed by my profound excitement about the person whose baby it has become.

With ten years experience as a journalist, editor, and designer for such periodicals as InfoWorld magazine, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the award-winning Cape Cod Times, Dhyana Sansoucie brings a venerable resume and remarkable skill to Team:Designorati. She has a perfect blend of real world experience, talent, opinion, and attitude. More importantly, her passion for the design and communication of news is even greater than my own.

And so it is with pride and confidence that I hand over D:News Design to Dhyana’s nurturing arms. It is my tremendous and sincere pleasure to present to you the newest perspective in Designorati’s 360° View of the Creative World, Designorati:News Design!