sports (2)

The end of the first semester

It has been a long, grueling, unforgiving semester filled with disappointing, dream crushing, heart smashing, and most importantly, a very passionate staff that I'm extremely grateful for. 

I started out this semester as a designer-turned-editor thinking this was going to be a piece of cake. To some extent this was true, but most of that notion was immediately proven wrong. Managing a staff of 10 with 40-50 writers is very hard.

But it wasn't just the staff and new management challenges which arose, it was the burden having to baby a new redesign to a publication that hasn't had a refresher in nearly eight years. Wait, yes, exactly eight years. I think we did okay, though. Those long days in the summer, pent up in front of a computer monitor with a bag of cheetos, were worth it. I had my adviser and managing editor to assist briefly at times, which took some of the burden off.

One thing that I didn't expect was having the hard-working and passionate staff that came to be. I've been with The Clarion since I started at Madison College, and I've only ever seen one or two staff who are passionate at a time. The whole lot of us invested a lot, though, and I hope it continues into next semester.

Some things I know I will be better at next semester:

- Designing efficiently: towards the last three-or-so issues, I could design nearly the entire publication alone. One of our designers left, so I had to pick up the slack. About 4 pages of slack, to be exact.

- Managing story and budget meetings

- Knowing when to use food as a bribery: almost never used it this semester, except at the end when I knew people would fall off the face of the planet.

- Knowing when to put a foot down and say no

- Planning for illustrations and graphics

- Knowing what stories to look for and who to give them to

- Reacting to staff drama: all of it focused on one staff member, who ended up having to leave us.

My graphic design classes could never teach me these things, and I'm glad I can utilize these skills now while still being able to design and have fun on a visual level.

All that's left this semester is to apply for the SND annual contest and hope for the best.

Cheers,

George

Read more…

Sun Sentinel Super Bowl strategy

South Florida hosted the Super Bowl this year and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank our team for all their great work over the last weeks. Here's a look at the strategy.



Collaboration:
It's been a collaborative effort involving much of the newsroom, online and TV. We tried to take advantage of early planning efforts to have a cohesive visual approach to all SB content that seamlessly integrates photography, writing, graphics and design.


Branding:
The dominant visual element was the branding that Christian Font developed, based on the official branding, to be used in print, online and the morning news show. Here is a look at the basic building blocks, which also includes a color and typographic palette.

Anticipation:
To the right, you can see how it played on all the Super Bowl wraps and specials sections leading up to the game. Those sections started the weekend of the championship games with something every day during the final week before the game.

We also ran front page stories every day that week. Here's a look at a few.

100 days before the Super Bowl, we started a countdown that highlighted a player each day by their jersey number. The countdown eventually moved to the cover toppers of the special sections. Below are a couple examples.

Utility:
In addition to infographics, grids, graphics and other short-form content, devices like the cover footer below included weather updates, ticket prices and useful info.

Completeness:
Branding and design strategy is applied to related content from any section, even for those looking for something to do instead of watching the Super Bowl.

Follow this link for a slide show of complete pages.



Read more…