She’s Back ...
Walking back into the newsroom, I was curious how it would go. It had been a year since I’d left my role as Visual / Design Lead and page designer. Since I’d moved across the Pacific to work as a freelance writer, education consultant and marketing/design gal for a small company in Beijing. I’d only peripherally followed newspapers via my social media feeds, and had skulked around Newseum only when I had a spare moment between my classes.
And here I was, semi-sneaking in the side door of my old newsroom, making a subtle entrance as people put out the next day’s paper. People would raise their heads for a moment, do the double (or triple) take and then the great attempt to catch up on a year began. I absorbed every detail I could get on how things had been - who was designing what page, who had taken what editor role, etc. I was fascinated by the new digs the Camera office had, by the shifts in roles, by how it all felt so different yet not at all different.
As I casually sifted through newspapers on folks’ desks, I still cringed a bit. On the whole, what efforts I’d made for design improvement hadn’t stuck. Not to say good work hadn’t happened - I was well aware of the brilliance of a few of my good friends in that office. The reporting and photography was still fantastic, as was the editing and decision on where to run what. The presentation desk had seen some big losses, which left me only a few familiar faces. Of them, I knew one shining star had continued to put out top-notch designs. But on the whole, I was disappointed. Hadn’t I marked just these same mistakes dozens of times before I left? Hadn’t I tried to teach alternatives to competing headlines? Hadn’t I railed about headline hierarchy, photo sizing and text breaks?
Sigh.
“It’s not your job anymore,” I’d repeat to myself. Over. And over. And over. “You need to let this go.”
But that’s the pickle I’ve found myself in. I still care - a lot - about journalism, and more specifically my old newspapers. I still stalked their front pages on social media, and looked them up on Newseum. I’d redesign them in my mind, wishing I could appear over their shoulders with helpful tips. I wanted to pick their brains. Why did you choose that font? Why did you opt for that placement? What was your process? Justify that for me - fight for your design, and we’ll see if we can’t compromise.
Alas, I couldn’t. Everyone was safe from my incessant, obsessive design mania, and were probably glad for it. Who wants some know-it-all (who absolutely doesn’t know it all) harping on them all the time?
Well. Never fear. I found a way to release a bit of the pent-up design anxiety. My friend (the aforementioned shining star) was designing the Daily Camera cover. She could probably see my open salivation at the opportunity, because she eventually turned.
“Alex, do you want to design a page or something?”
Me: “Well, I mean ... if you don’t mind ... I could, you know ... I mean ...”
Aka: HELL YES.
Twenty minutes later, I’m flying through Methode at a rate I never dreamed possible after a year’s absence (proving how deeply engrained that godforsaken program is embedded in all our brains), tinkering with the next day’s A1.
Ah. Now that felt good.
While it isn’t everything I’d want it to be, being my only page for a year, it felt good to give the fine folks at the Camera a page closer to the quality they deserve to get every single day. Something with a bold headline, and tons of big art. A design with white space, but doesn’t lose text to the design. It has a clear headline hierarchy and an appropriate use of color.
It was a start, anyway, to what I’d love to see coming out of that office every day.
I have a feeling, now that China feels a bit ... easier, I suppose, or at least more manageable, I’ll be hunting down news pages more often. You can take the girl out of the newsroom, but eventually she’ll just weasel her way back in and offer the same unsolicited advice she did before.
Tune in for what I hope will be a minor resurgence in design-crazed, journalist-loving posts to “A Design State of Mind”.
