These are the people I work with

Please look at the work my colleagues are doing. It’s crazymaking some days, making so many newspapers, but I am so privileged to get to be the chief ambassador for these badasses and I hope they all know how proud I am of them.

Some things I’ve done that were printed on paper

I’ve gotten really bad at keeping a running visual tally of the things I design at work, so here’s a dump from the past few months! What you see here are some pages, some centerpieces.

tcl 1A 1224


CP for Montgomery Advertiser


CP for Montgomery Advertiser


CP for Montgomery Advertiser

Lighten up: News design, levity, and fighting the impulse to be So Serious

I haven’t posted about news design here in a long time. Did you guys know I still do that for a living? Oh boy, do I ever.

My time working for newspapers has now stretched into a decade. In that time, I’ve had the honor of working with eight daily newspapers, each with its own distinct flavor determined by a combination of location, publisher whims, editor disposition (this goes all the way from the top editor to the last copy editor who proofs the pages before releasing every night), ad/marketing department attitudes, staff makeup, money woes or triumphs, and more.

If there is one thing that has cropped up time and time again that can impede good design, it’s an editor’s fear of levity.

Editors want their papers to be taken seriously. I get that, and I believe a paper’s credibility is what can ensure its longevity. But there seems to be this idea that newspapers are above needing to be fun or interesting, as if fun and interesting are beneath us as journalists. It’s such a dangerous mindset, particularly for midsize metro/regional papers. I’m not talking about the New York Times here.

Just think of all the amazing things that vie for a person’s attention every day. We carry around these Infinite Information Machines in our hands everywhere we go. We can read whatever we want, make art, or play games on these things. There are giant, beautiful television screens with whiz-bang graphics streaming across them at all hours, bringing us nonstop data and entertainment. We sit down at smaller screens and stare into the glowing rectangle for hours and hours, an entire world’s worth of knowledge at our fingertips. When do we actually stop and notice a piece of information and show it to someone else to spread our delight with it?

When it is unexpected, memorable or funny. When it brings us a ping of satisfaction.

They are small but important parts of our experiences as humans in info-saturated 2014, those little moments of fun. Build up enough of those experiences with a product and you will start to feel a connection that can grow into brand loyalty.

Newspaper editors are so reticent to play that game — a game where frivolity might exist alongside seriousness — that they often opt to squash everything but the seriousness because We Are a Real Newspaper, after all. But what does that mean now? And how is that working out for you, anyway?

Google doesn’t put that doodle up to make money. Google puts that doodle up because it’s fun and it expands the experience of using Google into something you’re going to want to do regularly, to see what silly/sweet/funny/wacky thing they might come up with next. And then Google makes money because once you get caught up in the Google brand, they’ve got their meathooks in you everywhere you go on the web and are running behind you, picking up the loose change falling out of your pockets.

So, what is the harm in letting your paper bring levity to your readers if it’s done in a smart way? Particularly if your paper has access to a designer or editor who is really good at identifying when and how to bring unexpected elements of fun to your pages?

It has sort of shocked me over the years to watch editors shoot down really, really clever ideas by designers for pedantic or overly literal reasons. Editors sometimes have a habit of letting small, inconsequential qualms that can easily be addressed blind them to the overall greatness of an idea. That’s why designer-editor collaboration — and having editors with strong visual understanding and designers with strong editing chops — is more important than ever. And why trust and building smarter teams is more important than ever. Our staffs are smaller so we need to work smarter. The people still left in the newspaper industry need to be the ones who shine the brightest, not just the ones who happen to be left over after years of staff hemorrhaging.

(And, yes, I know what a tall order that last sentence is. Still, I hold out hope.)

Part of my current job is to go to bat for ideas I think are worth fighting for, even if editors don’t get them or think they are silly. I have lost count by now of all the interesting, quirky, memorable design ideas we’ve pitched to editors that have gotten shot down outright for being a little too much, a little too forward, a little too weird, or that have made it past initial reactions but then got henpecked by editors who weren’t sold on the idea to begin with and built up enough steam over the evening to get it killed. Or, worse yet, ideas that started out really fun and engaging, but that end up getting twisted and mutated when editors ask for disparate concepts to be mashed together so that they don’t have to pick one idea over another.

Many editors would much rather go with something straightforward and boring than something that might be a little edgy, something that might give the reader a little wink wink nudge nudge to get the point across. But which of those approaches is actually going to get noticed? Or remembered? Can you remember what your daily newspaper looked like in the rack this morning?

I’m here to make a plea, in overwrought wording so you know how serious I am: Editors, be ye not afraid of memorable, unexpected news design. Be ye not afraid of silliness sometimes. Remember that more than ever before, people expect to have interesting, worth-talking-about experiences in conjunction with the products we sell*. We’d be foolish to ignore that and insist that providing moments of delight is beneath us.

So, wonks and pedants, literalists and newshounds, hear my plea. Give your readers some moments of delight every now and again. Have a sense of humor in your pages, where it counts and makes sense. And take some time to enjoy that delight yourself. I promise it will not kill you.

* And yes, the newspaper we sell is a product. I have reluctantly come to understand and embrace that concept. It’s a product with a noble purpose, of course, so that helps.

I did something I actually like!

I don’t post about specific stuff I do at work very often because … actually I’m not sure why. It ain’t modesty, I promise. I think I’m still just delusionally assuming that if I don’t post specifics about my work that no one at the new job (new? I’ve been there a year!) is going to find this corner of the internet and discover what a nutty broad I am. That’s crazy, I suppose, because surely by now they have already figured that out.

ANYWAY! For three weeks I have been working with the editors at the Montgomery paper to illustrate their huge series on violent crime in the city. I had spent a lot of time working on The Commercial Appeal’s True Crime series a few years ago, so I felt pretty equipped to tackle the topic from a design standpoint. Except this time around, the editor was not enthusiastic about the photographs that went with the main stories. So he asked if we could go conceptual.

So here’s what I did.

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I’m a bit self-conscious about my ability to execute conceptual designs. I’ve felt that it’s been a weak spot for me since I didn’t get much graphic design training in college (I was on the media design path in J-school; graphic design fell under the college of art) and I spent the first seven years of my career cutting my teeth at a paper that had amazing photographers and an amazing illustrator. There really wasn’t much of a need for me to do conceptual illustrations. So that muscle never got worked.

But I took the editor’s challenge and had a moment of inspiration one evening while digging through stock art. I found this one piece — a spiky blue wave drawing. I had my way with it in Photoshop and ended up with a huge and aggressive wall of red ink engulfing nearly the entire front page. I thought there was no way it would fly with the editor and suspected it wouldn’t fly with anyone, so I ran it past my creative director (email subject line: “Is this crazy?”). He enthusiastically greenlit it and helped me refine it. And then the next week’s photographs were also week, and so we decided we’d have a trilogy of illustrations.

The roots are my favorite. They are hand drawn. Er, mouse drawn. (I should get a tablet.) And that is the third iteration of them. They started out just at the top, and then I had them go down both sides of the page, but my boss told me they looked like Frodo’s head. (They did. And Michael Jackson’s.)

It was a ton of work but I’m happy with how each of these pages turned out and with how they all work together. Kudos to the editor for going with such a bold idea — many editors might have balked — and for letting me come up with ideas that strayed from his original vision.

Another batch of news designs

Don’t mind me, I’m just clicking and dragging and portfolioing.

Shelby Farms: Urban oasis
A story about the growth and change Shelby Farms is experiencing, accompanied by stunning photos.

11/28/2010 SUNView0V1

11/28/2010 SUNView0V2   11/28/2010 SUNView0V3

11/28/2010 SUNView0V4   11/28/2010 SUNView0V5

Check out the story here, as well as Jim Weber’s beautiful photo gallery.

In the shadows
A follow-up to the shocking CA story about civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as a FBI informant.

Withers part two design 1

Withers part two design 2   Withers part two design 3

Withers part two design 4   Withers part two design 5

Check out part two of the Withers saga here.

‘I’M AL QAEDA’ design

The CA, for a few months now, has been receiving letters from self-identified jihadist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad as he spends time in prison for his part in the death of one soldier and the injury of another at a military recruiting center in Little Rock. This past Sunday, we printed some excerpts of those letters, in which Muhammad describes his purpose and what he sees as an all-out war on Uncle Sam by those Muslims who have been called to fight. It’s interesting and pretty terrifying stuff. I figure most of all, it’s just sad to see someone give himself over to violence with such fervor and sense of moral duty. I don’t get it.

Read the story and take a look at his writings here. Here’s how the spread looked in the paper:

'I'M AL QAEDA' page one

'I'M AL QAEDA' page two   untitled'I'M AL QAEDA' page three

'I'M AL QAEDA' page four   'I'M AL QAEDA' page five

In other design news, I found out late last week that I won a Scripps third-quarter design award for the work I did on the Ernest Withers special section. Awesome! That brings me to three Scripps quarterly awards. It’s nice to know that the company is paying attention to how the paper looks, and giving our team some kudos!

‘America hasn’t forgotten’

More news designs to share!

This small but fun package ran this past Sunday in Viewpoint. The story –which is a great read and might make you tear up a little or, ahem, a lot — is here.

WWII vets cover

WWII vets page two   WWII vets page three

The exposure of Ernest Withers

The CA broke a pretty fascinating story on Sunday: Ernest Withers, the iconic civil rights photographer, was a paid FBI informant. It’s almost too crazy to contemplate, but most history is, if you think about it.

I was lucky enough to get to do the print layout, although that meant that I had to sit on such a crazy story for a few weeks. That’s nothing compared to Marc Perrusquia’s having to keep mum about it for the months — hell, years — leading up to publication.

I’ve got the pages, arranged by spread, after the jump:

Continue reading

From the shameless self-promotion files

(Cross-filed in the shameless friend promotion cabinet)

Check out these sweet page designs featuring Shane McDermott’s artwork. The Facebook page is my favorite, even though Shane had to bust ass to get it done on deadline since his original sketch was lost to the ether thanks to some kind of shitty Illustrator-related technical glitch. Shane, when he reads this post, will probably leave a comment saying that he likes the Facebook illustration, just not as much as the original one he did. And then he will sigh heavily.

True Crime part five: Cherry’s Choice

Completely forgot to post these back in December. Oops.

Cherry's Choice A1 Cherry's Choice

Cherry's Choice 2 Cherry's Choice 3

Cherry's Choice 4 Cherry's Choice 5

Cherry's Choice 6 Cherry's Choice 7

Cherry's Choice 8 Cherry's Choice 9

It’s a pretty remarkable story, especially when you consider it’s about a young lesbian of color. How often does a story like that make it into the paper?

And check out this little explainer video about the series, which was featured today at the annual H.F. Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America in New York:

The CA has nominated the series for a Pulitzer.