Funny Stuff with Don Asmussen

I haven't laughed this hard during a presentation in years. Don Asmussen who does political cartoons at the San Francisco Chronicle and has also done a lot of work for Time magazine. His presentation completely was built around three main pieces. The first was his ideals on what the 25 most influencial moments in design were. They were completelty off the wall and extremely funny. He also decided that SND needed a new logo to represent the true feel of the conference. His idea was a kitten's face, he said it was very comforting. Lastly he recreated how he thought the actually process of picking winners was done. His idea is that all the figure heads just sit around and get drunk and more times than not just pick themselves as winners. He also looked into the ying-yang theory of how he believed that graphic deisgner and word junkies need to find a middle ground and stop stroking there own egos.

Side Note: VP of SND had to leave because he was on the blunt end of many of the jokes.

Dustin Galish
BGSU

10 Years of SND's best designed papers

Posted by Ashley, BGSU

This is an session based on the winners from the past years of SNDs best designed papers, which is aimed at being the Pulitzer of newspaper design.

A large portion of the conversation was on how the awards were broke down based on geography and circulation size, which showed that both small and large newspapers can win. Similarily, we learned that the US has received 52% of the awards, with Europe receiving 36%, Canada at 15%, Latin American with 8% and 3% made up of other locations. Although the US has currently received the most awards for the last 10 years, the number of awards received by them has been significantly decreasing in the last four to five years.

Some of the tips that were suggested to make a paper more like a best designed paper were for designs to be close to invisible and for the design to create a senese of location, where you could cover up the flag and still be able to tell the location of the paper.

All in all I feel that this was very beneficial session, as it pointed out numerous characteristics of the award winning papers.

The Business Side of the Redesign Process

Alan Jacobson gave a session on how redesign affects papers and the steps needed to design effectively. The first step it to set goals. If a paper does not have goals they have nothing to strive to accomplish. The next step is to do research. Not just any research but effective useful research that tells what the readers want. The third is to create a dazzling design. The fourth step it to test the design. Most papers do very little or no testing. However, it is a critical step that should not be over looked. The final step is promotions. Be creative with promotions. Additionally if you promote your paper you will sell more ad space, creating more money.

Small Papers, Big Ideas

Javier Errea gave this presentation in the Gold Room in Spanish this morning. Translation headsets were provided, but there were quite a few native speakers in attendance. Mr. Errea used examples of work at Heraldo de Aragon and Diaro de Noticias to raise some interesting questions about the design industry: Why not go tabloid? Is "tabloid" more about size or more about frame of mind? Mr. Errea also poked fun a little about consulting work, how consultants are seen to have all the answers and yet are never wrong. But, he pointed out, a newspaper always needs to consider whether something they are doing (even if the consultant suggests it) is really for the readers, or if it is just a cost-cutting venture. He suggested that the design of a paper always needed to reflect the paper's soul.

Perhaps the most interesting thing from the lecture was one question Mr. Errea raised that stirred some debate in the Q&A. Mr. Errea pointed out that some of the most well-designed pages were the least newsworthy. "What are we rewarding at SND?" he asked. Although many companies still trust a face-lift as a solution to circulation problems, is this using our agenda-setting power well? Who decides that the gray, newsy pages are "ugly" anyway? After Mr. Errea made these comments, one man in the Q&A stood and asserted that we weren't journalists — we are artists, and so we shouldn't worry about newsworthiness as much as we should worry about drawing the readers in through a colorful front page. It was an interesting discussion that goes to the heart of our role and identity as designers.

Sophisticated Solutions in Features Design

This presentation concentrated soley on features with in the Boston Globe. Greg Klee ran a great show here showing just a huge amount of pieces. He gave a lot of information on his personal style and also his likes and dislikes of his co-workers. His work was extremely diverse, showing not only his layout abilities but also his wonderful ability to be creative in a short amount of time. He outlined his presentation around key solutions that he felt were universal to any designer. He did have to cut his presentation short due to time constraints but it definitely did not take away from his presentation overall.

Local Sports, Big League Presentation

This was a very well planned out presentation on sports design. Tons and tons of work shown by The Fort Worth Star Telegram. They really emphasized large pictures and bold headlines. Many of their headline works were one-word headlines with exclamation points after them, which they made fun of themselves about. I really enjoyed the presentaion overall. The main point of this presentation was "aggresive story telling through design".

Dustin Galish
BGSU

Design for a Different News Consumer

By Nathan Clendenin
This session focused on the current race to reach the younger demographic. Sonda Andersson Pappan of dialV9 design shared her experience in designing for different audiences. She discounted the myth that youth do not consume very much news and argues for design geared to youth with examples from various publications. Ellen Meany, of Isthmus Publishing Co. then shared examples from her Minnesota based publication, The Daily Page. Kerri Abrams, from Dallas Morning News shared her paper's solution to reaching a younger audience (which was the result of being locked with her team in a room until they figured out a solution!). Their free mini-paper, Quick, has a growing circulation of 155,00o and is distributed via routes and in stores. Kat Topaz of Topaz Design shared her approach reaching the younger market. "I find some of the assumptions about younger readers offensive," Topaz remarked as explained that what youth really need is an answer to the question, "Why should I read this piece?" Topaz shared examples from different "Alt" Magazines from around the country. She highly advocates testing theories about youth through various market research techniques.


Kat Topaz fields questions after the presentation. Photo by Nathan Clendenin