My junior year of college I took my first newpaper design class. Let me tell you- I was not looking forward to it. Everything about newspaper design to me said boring, boring, boring. When I thought of newspapers, I thought gray and boxes. That's it. I remember on the first day of class our professor, the wonderful Julie Elman, said that in the past she has had many students who began the class completely uninterested in newspaper design, but left loving it. Of course I thought, "Well that certainly won't be me." Technically, it wasn't me- yet. It took another year before I realized it, but I did fall in love with newspaper.
I am incredibly competitive, and I love a challenge. Winning is thrilling. That's what newspaper design is- a challenge. Finding a way to make newspaper design not gray and boxes is a challenge, and it is what makes my job so fun. Some days are more challenging than others. Like days when your A1 centerpiece art is 3 photos of dogs that look like they were shot with the first camera ever made and are all cropped in the strangest ways possible. Finding a unique solution to this challenge is exciting. And on top of that, each day is a new page, a new challenge. If you fail one day, it's okay because you get to do it again tomorrow.
Also, I think it's making me better at puzzles.
The paper I work on the most often is The Fond du Lac (that's in Wisconsin) Reporter.
Here are some of my pages from the past couple of weeks:
This "splash" page was really fun. I love how the water is spilling over into the other stories. It's surprising. I was given decent art, but wanted to do something a little crazy. Hence, the giant splash of water over the whole page. I also worked with the editors to write a new headline to echo the feel of the rest of the page. Fun
I thought the art for the story was pretty cool- great colors, interesting content. The story was about a world Atlatl competition. It's similar to javelin throwing, but using a thing called an atlatl, which is an ancient Aztec hunting tool dating back 25,000 years. The headline was pretty basic, so again I worked with the editors to create a head and subhead that would fit with the feel of the art. I thought the most interesting aspect of the story was the backstory and uniqueness of the atlatl rather than the competition itself, so we worked with that angle.
