SND at 25: From revolution to evolution

I have been a member of SND since before it existed. In fact, somewhere in my basement I have copies of the newsletter Richard Curtis, then of the Baltimore News American (RIP), produced for a loose-knit group formed at the first API newspaper design seminar in 1978.

Members of the 1978 API Design seminar. For a print-quality (2.5MB) version of this picture with a caption, click here

This group went on to become the core of the fledgling Society of Newspaper Design. It was a pretty small group in those days of the late 70s. Newspapers were still comfortable in producing products similar to the ones they always had. Many senior managers were still seeing the world with blinders, and the foundations of their newspapers were becoming less stable as each year went by.

The Sun in Baltimore, Maryland still looked like a great paper — from the turn of the century. There wasn't a lot of "visual " development in that paper or many others. Papers that had developed a set presentation in the 1950s were still using it decades later.

This is The Sun from 1965 - just 13 years prior to the founding of the Society of Newspaper Designers. View larger image

This is the York Dispatch from 1988 - 10 years after the founding of the Society - some folks just didn't get the message. View larger image

As part of API's newspaper design seminar in October 1978 participants were asked to produce a fictional newspaper called the Welltown News. While some items broke the barriers, the participants were still thinking in traditional newspaper presentation. (See selected pictures). Robert Lockwood's project did foreshadow some embryonic changes that would later become the Morning Call in Allentown, PA.

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View larger image	These project pages from the API seminar in 1978 represented the work of three designers who went on to become leaders in the Society and the industry: Robert Lockwood (left), Richard Curtis (top left) and Rob Covey (top right).

This is one of the three pages designed by Eric Seidman at the Washington Star. Eric won three of ten gold awards given for newspaper page design at the SND's first competition. View larger image

It was toward the mid-80s that the "Design Revolution " began to develop traction. Lockwood and Ed Miller took a great and positive (some thought suicidal) leap at The Morning Call. They raised the bar far beyond what many newspapers were willing to achieve, and they certainly caused a great deal of discussion in the industry.

This was the front page of The Morning Call, one of only four newspapers given gold for overall excellence. Robert Lockwood and Ed Miller would change the perception of newspaper design forever. View larger image

But the signs were all there. A growing number of newspapers with medium-to-large circulations were waking up to the fact that long gray columns of type were not appealing to readers.

The Society's role grew as well. From a small group of passionate and dedicated designers, the membership grew exponentially. The Society opened an office in the Newspaper Center in Reston, Virginia, and hired Ray Chattman as its first executive director. We were publishing the Design Journal (later, Design), we had a newsletter and the competition annual and the office became a clearinghouse for design and graphics-related topics, information and speakers.

The first copy of Design was billed as the journal of the Society of Newspaper Designers. It was edited by Richard Curtis and appeared in March of 1980.

Less than two years after its debut, Design became the journal of the Society of Newspaper Design. The officers believed that the Society was excluding a large number of individuals who had an interest in newspaper design. The subtle change was reflected in the cover of the December 1981 issue, edited by Bob Mellis.

By this time, many newsrooms across the country were beginning to open up to a new, visual way of thinking. Lou Silverstein, AME at The New York Times, cast a critical eye on the NYT regional papers and developed some incredibly advanced design concepts. USA TODAY was a phenomenon that couldn't be stopped. I remember seeing more color weather pages in just two years than I had in the previous 15 years I had been in the business. Even newspapers that had no business trying to print color printed half- to full-page weather packages.

Newspaper design was given a huge boost with the advent of the Macintosh. Freehand and Illustrator burst onto the scene and into many newspaper art departments with the impact of a nuclear weapon. New tools, new skills. Some folks in the art department did not take kindly to this technology, however. As graphics director at The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey, I installed a Mac Plus and had each member of the department spend half an hour at the computer each day, just playing with the software. One artist didn't want to participate and would go to the Mac and sit with a book for a half hour each day.

The AP, UPI and Reuters were quick to realize the benefits of the new technology and, beginning with MacDraw, newspapers suddenly had a regular delivery of infographics that they could put into the paper.

Newspaper art departments could now do spectacular feature pages in half the time, and make changes, when necessary, in minutes instead of hours. We saw the development of the techno-artist. More and newer Macs and software continued the growth of computer-generated graphics, art and illustrations.

But for the most part, the news pages were still off-limits to the "techno weenies " in the art department. That was going to change, as well.

As we slid into the 1990s, newspapers had become far more visual than anyone in the early 1980s could have imagined. There were so many variables that contributed to this growth. More and better offset printing (even letterpress units could be "tuned " or modified for flexo), increasing competition from other media, digital scanning, Photoshop, and the creation of "design " and "graphics " editors and departments were just a few.

And all this time, the SND was providing the fuel for growth. The annual competition had grown out of control, the SND annual was one of the greatest "borrow " books available, and the annual conference offered exposure to the best and the brightest, some with great staying power, others that exploded like a supernova and disappeared.

We started the Quick Courses; we had technical sessions for software and hardware; tip and trick sheets were to be found everywhere. There was even the annual SND poker game (boy, I miss those, heh, Marty? Brian?).

But things began to run amok. It is my opinion, not necessarily shared by others, that the design pendulum had swung too far. We were seeing pages that were visually stunning, pages you wanted to frame and hang on the wall, but pages that were eminently illegible— once you got past the visual, you couldn't decipher the verbal.

We awarded the mega pages and the design nuances. We touted the super graphics and the distorted type.

The 1990's saw some brilliance in newspaper design. Eric Seidman, one of the best designers in the country, was back at The Virginia-Pilot, creating pages like this one telling the readers the fate of Timothy McVeigh. View larger image

A fine example of the KISS principle that also wows the reader. This page from the front of The Washington Post Business section, didn't need a lot of "bells and whistles " to make the point crystal clear. View larger image

As we entered the new millennium, we have gotten away from the mega-graphic that contained more information than a reader could comprehend. We were still doing large graphics that helped our readers understand the most complex issues - but without the overkill. This example from The Washington Post, made the obscure, clear when explaining the anthrax decontamination for the Brentwood Post Office. View larger image

We were designing pages for our peers. We were designing pages to win competitions. We were designing pages to WOW! We weren't designing pages to win readers.

I am not sure if SND was the unwitting accomplice in all this or fostered the movement in this direction to continue its growth. Regardless, we went through a stretch of overdesigned newspapers, underskilled designers, and managers who didn't have a clue.

SND saw international chapters and affiliations spring up and allowed the proselytizing of the "design " message to seek new and fertile ground. The SNDS (Society of Newspaper Design Scandinavia) brought a new influx of ideas and design approaches to the table that were well worth considering. Unfortunately some designers copied these approaches without modification and introduced Scandinavian (and later Spanish) visual cultures into an American visual market.

Yet we were better off for these influences from Europe. They gave the astute designer new avenues to try and opened new ways of looking at some old visual challenges. It also helped design become an integrated part of the news process.

As we edged out of the 1990s and into the new century, the revolution ended and the evolution started to take hold. It was almost like a drunk coming off a binge. We had the headache of declining readership, decreasing ad lineage, and a far more visually oriented audience. We began to sober up to the fact that readers were in it to get information — first and foremost — not look at all the pretty pages. That they could get BOTH, became a realization.

With the advent of the Readership Institute and the Reader Initiatives, we have been able to shift back to the customer, the reader, our consumer. We have piles of research from content to eye-track that is being applied to the design and structure of our newspapers.

A good bit of the stridency found in DESIGN in the 90s has been replaced with a pragmatic look at our craft and how to apply it. Things that should have been done years ago are being done now. SND has shifted course again and is heading in a much more productive direction. With the importance of design and packaging, SND has the leadership role in bringing up the next generation of news designers. Our design mission has grown with the technology of delivery. We now deal every day with news and information that is presented in print, online and through broadcast.

The newspaper industry is in late middle age, and SND is still in its youth. Print media will take new and different forms, but there will still be a need for the visual presentation and SND can insure that it is done well.