Behind the Visuals at Student Papers
A roundtable interview of the designers leading student publications
Most of what I’ve learned about design, leadership, journalism and collaboration took place inside a rickety house on 744 Ostrom Avenue. I designed at art directed at my student paper, The Daily Orange, for my first three years of college, and it was the best thing I’ve done as a student at Syracuse University.
My perspective is a common one among people in the industry — the experience you gain through working at student publications is unlike any other. On top of being a full-time student, groups of dedicated student journalists come together outside of classes and produce a paper. The learning moments and friendships that come out of this setting are priceless.
As news consumption is increasingly digital, print journalism at the collegiate level isn’t always a priority, or even possible. For independent papers who survive without university funding, it can be a challenge to make a print product profitable and to design and art direct with limited resources.
Despite these challenges, there are so many student publications that are producing great work. I spoke with six students who are currently leading visuals departments at papers that are still printing. In a roundtable Q&A, these students told me about their differing experiences in working at their student papers.
- Abby Day, Ohio University, class of 2018. Art Director of The Post.
- Stephanie Hays, Elon University, class of 2018. Design Chief of Elon News Network (The Pendulum).
- Dana Sparks, University of Oregon, class of 2018. Art Director of The Daily Emerald.
- Emily Abshire, Indiana State University, class of 2019. Creative Director of IDS News.
- Claire Barkholz, Michigan State University, class of 2019. Design Editor of The State News.
- Lucy Naland, Syracuse University, class of 2019. Presentation Director of The Daily Orange.
We’ll start off by covering the basics. How big is your newsroom, and how big is your design staff? How many days a week do you print and what format?
Abby Day: Our newsroom is a comfortable size. It’s located in an office space in our student union, formally known as Baker Center. The newsroom has four small offices, an art department room, a staff writer room and an open-communal room. There are 13 designers on my staff and we print a weekly, 24-page tabloid paper.
Stephanie Hays: Elon News Network’s newsroom consists of around 100 students that work in both print and broadcast news. The design team has 12 members including myself that layout the paper, design infographics, create illustrations and make graphics for our website. ENN’s newspaper, The Pendulum, is printed every Wednesday. We are weirdly in between a broadsheet and a tabloid in size, the dimensions are 11x17 and it folds in the middle.
Dana Sparks: The Emerald newsroom is roughly 90 people from writers to web development, with a design desk consisting of four people. We print twice weekly in a tabloid format.
Emily Abshire: We have arts, campus, region, sports, general assignments, digital, photo, design and weekend (entertainment) desks, and each of those has one or two editors. The design desk has three design chiefs, and I am above them. Then we have four management editors: the editor-in-chief, me [creative director] and two managing editors. Overall, there’s probably about 50–75 people that are actively involved in the IDS. We print on broadsheet five days a week (Monday-Friday) and our paper is usually 8 to 16 pages.
Claire Barkholz: Our newsroom consists of around 30 people, my design team just includes myself and two other designers. We print biweekly and it is tabloid style.
Lucy Naland: The D.O. has about 40 “in-house” staff members, and 20–30 people work on a typical production night. My staff consists of six designers who rotate between our News, Feature and Sports sections. In a normal week, The D.O. prints four times, Monday through Thursday. Our paper is 16 pages most days. Some weeks, we also put out a 12-page football or basketball game preview on Friday.
Tell me about your role at your paper. How long have you been in charge of the visuals department? How long do people generally hold the position and what does your job entail?
A.D.: My role as art director is to set up the tabloid at the start of each week, assign pages to designers, edit the visual elements of every page and essentially hold responsibility for the visual production and turnout of the paper. I have been in charge of the visuals department for a little over a semester now, but I also held responsibility for the production of our daily paper last year on the nights that I edited as a front-page designer. People generally hold the position of art director/design editor for 1–2 years. My job entails attending weekly staff meetings, budget meetings and week ahead meetings. On top of this, I’m expected to edit on-call Tuesday nights and edit in the newsroom from 6–12p.m. on Wednesday nights (our paper runs on Thursdays).
S.H.: I’ve been the Design Chief for The Pendulum (and now Elon News Network) for nearly two years now. When people are hired for roles at ENN, they are hired for a full year and then they must reapply for their job, or they can apply to a different position. So people generally hold their positions for a year, but some people choose to stay in their position for longer than that. I got hired as the Design Chief around spring break of my freshman year and I’m a junior now, so I’ve stayed in my position a bit longer than most.
D.S.: Well, I’ve been the art director for about three weeks now. Art director is generally a year long position where you are the bridge of communication between all the visual desks and the rest of the newsroom.
I keep a line of communication between me and all of the editors so I can connect the dots, from written to visual. I work hands-on with photo, video, design, and a small pool of freelance illustrators for our online and print content and cover stories. I also coordinate all of the visuals and collaborate with web development for our E1 projects which are more in-depth stories with photos, video, a podcast and illustration when applicable.
It’s really a whirlwind. I feel like I experience all of the newsroom from this position.
E.A.: I’m the creative director, which means I’m also a part of management. I like to tell people that I oversee everything that is not the words. I oversee the three design chiefs and our design staff, the two photo editors and their photo staff and the social media desk. I am most involved with the design desk, because that’s my strong point and where I’m needed the most to make decisions. Our staff cycles every semester, so I was hired as in December and I’ll only be in the position until May. My job is mainly managing and planning for people, but I’m also a teacher and a mentor to the design chiefs and the design staff. I’m trying to push people to understand digital, because our paper is being cut to two days a week next semester.
C.B.: I started out as an editorial designer last spring. And then I obtained the editor position when I worked here during the summer semester. My job entails laying out the pages and designing the graphics and illustrations for the print edition of our student newspaper. I am also in charge of two other designers, and I sit in on budget meetings with all the other editors to plan out all of our papers content. Our former design editor left after last spring and I took her role. I would say people usually work here for on average 2 years.
L.N.: I started my training in December and officially started working as presentation director in January. Positions at The D.O. are semester-long, though many PDs stay on for two, sometimes even three. As PD, I work with designers nightly as they produce pages for our three main sections, news feature and sports. Throughout the night, I help select art to use in the paper and also work with designers to develop their pages. Outside of my daily work, I coordinate with photographers, editors and illustrators to plan and produce art. I also design our sports guides, special editions of the paper and often commission artists to create covers for these special issues.
What made you decide to get involved with your student paper?
A.D.: I got involved with The Post because I wanted something to help me grow in my field outside of my classes. I got a recruitment email over winter break of my freshman year and I took the opportunity. Honestly, it was the best decision I made toward the success in my career.
S.H.: I was on my high school’s newspaper as the Opinion Editor way back in the day. While I didn’t necessarily love writing opinions, I really enjoyed laying out all of the pages for the section and getting fun artwork to go along with the different columns. So when I got to Elon, I knew that I wanted to join the newspaper as a designer, but I also applied to be a columnist or a lifestyle reporter. Luckily though, they hired me as a designer (thank god).
D.S.: I’m a journalism student mainly focused in photojournalism and videography. I held a video marketing job for about a year when I made the decision to start looking into jobs that would put me closer to where I wanted to be in my future. So, I applied for the Emerald as a videographer in summer 2016 and here I am.
E.A.: Before I even came to campus, I emailed my adviser, and I was like “how do I get involved? I don’t even know what else to do!” because I was the editor-in-chief of my yearbook in high school and I had been doing publications for so long. I got involved the first week of school as a freshman. I was just a designer who would come in a couple times a week and do inside pages at night, but after that I worked as design chief, and last semester, I somehow got pushed into being the first web editor that IDS ever had.
C.B.: I’m a journalism major with a specialization in design so I thought that it would be really good experience to work here. I worked on my high school’s newspaper and really enjoyed it too, so when I came to MSU I wanted to see if I could get involved with theirs as well.
L.N.: I worked at my high school’s newspaper for four years, and originally wanted to be a writer. Once I got into Syracuse, I knew I wanted to work at The D.O. before ever stepping foot on campus. I went to The D.O.’s open house in August 2015 and was hired as a designer two weeks later. That October, I changed my major from journalism to graphic design, and have been bent on working in editorial design since.
If you had to briefly summarize your paper’s design style and objectives, how would you describe it?
A.D.: Our style is highly influenced by RedEye Chicago tab for millennials. In the past year The Post has transitioned from broadsheet to tabloid and with that, our style has also changed. We look to RedEye for a lot of our inspiration because their visuals are graphic, modern and eye-catching. Our visual objective at The Post is to give every story visual hooks and to let each designer establish their own creative style for their pages. We embrace bold typography, whether it’s serif, sans serif or slab serif. We encourage designers to be versatile using InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Lastly, we make sure that we always maintain a cohesive and clean look for our paper.
S.H.: Fresh, modern, fun. I want the paper to be something that people want to pick up when they pass by it because of both the awesome and interesting content and the way the content is displayed.
D.S.: The design style, as of right now, is interesting. The art director before me trained all of the graphic designers herself, so I feel there is a groundwork that I’ve stepped into that is very different from my own, stylistically. Under my direction, I would say things are a bolder, higher contrast and I say “let’s get weird” at least once during production.
I’m encouraging the Emerald design team to push the bounds. This is the time to explore and develop. We’re never really going to have the opportunity to “get weird” like we do now at a college publication. If an idea comes out and it could be better, the worst that happens is that we command-z and start again or we learn a big lesson.
Objectively, for our readers, we’re trying to balance written content at the same time that we’re pushing a heavier visual presence. I think the challenge there is striving for flow and not over-complicating it.
E.A.: I really push my design chiefs to remember that they are visual journalists. I tell them that every single design choice they make has to have a purpose — it has to add something to the story. My objective is always to tell the news and help people understand it. With that, our style is pretty simple and clean, and we don’t do anything too elaborate, because it has to be purposeful.
C.B.: I would say that our design style is modern, simple and visually appealing. We try to have a good mix of photos, graphics and illustrations in our paper, and rotate between those when it comes to front page visuals.
L.N.: The D.O. is a learning institution and I keep this in mind when we produce a paper each night. I’m lucky to have an incredibly talented design staff that are constantly excited to to try new things with their pages. Approaching pages in new ways — while still staying within D.O. style — is one of my main emphases as PD. This semester, I’ve also been stressing the importance of whitespace and breaking up text on section fronts more.
Does your paper do special sections? If so, how many, and who is involved in their production?
A.D.: We do special sections about two to three times a semester. These include the welcome back issue, homecoming issue, presidential election issue, etc. I tend to step away during special issues and let our special projects editor, Matt Ryan, take the reins. He does a beautiful job with the production of special sections. Sometimes I’ll contribute illustrations or simple page designs for these issues, but these are normally my weeks off.
S.H.: Our paper does do special sections. Generally, we used to do one each semester, but last semester we did at least five and this semester we’ve already done one and will probably do at least one more. Of course, one of these was because a former Elon president died, and another was because our current president announced he was stepping down, so both of those got last-minute special sections. The people involved in them depends on the content, our sports editor was heavily involved in two of the special sections last semester (the Fall Sports Preview and the Basketball Preview), and our lifestyle editor was involved in our Freshly Plated special section (which was all about food!) and our news editor was involved in our election special section. Our managing editor and I are also involved, as well as any reporters that are assigned content and the design and copy team.
D.S.: We don’t have explicit “special sections”, but I would say that our E1 stories are special sections. They involve the writer(s), copy editors, the art director, design team, photo desk, videographers, podcasters and web development team.
E.A.: We produce special publications every month or every other month. They’re separate from the paper, and more like magazine-style guides to campus or to sporting events, that kind of thing. I design them with the design chiefs and special publications editor, and our entire staff helps write the stories.
C.B.: Yes, we have special welcome week and finals week “guides” and then we also have a housing guide in October when people are signing leases for the following years places to live.
L.N.: We have three main sports guides each year — Football, Basketball and Lacrosse. These guides each have their own style, which the PD is responsible for creating. The photos and overall appearance are heavily stylized to fit one cohesive look. When SU’s basketball and football teams have a weekend home game, we produce an extra Friday paper that acts as a game preview. This year, we also produced an inauguration paper. These special issues are always designed by myself and one other designer. I’m usually tasked with designing their covers, spreads and overall art direction. A member of my design staff designs the majority of the inside pages.
The importance of digital storytelling has grown rapidly in the past several years. How has your student paper adapted? What kind of digital work are you doing?
A.D.: Unfortunately, with the adjustment from daily broadsheets to weekly tabloids, we haven’t been able to put much of our focus into digital storytelling this year. The editors from the previous year designed the current website and we have a team of coders that update it daily and put up graphics that our our print designers produce for print stories that also run online. Next year I’m hoping to recruit interactive designers from our visual communication school to help improve in this area.
S.H.: Since our newspaper and student broadcast merged over the summer, we’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of great cross-platform journalism that works really well online as multimedia pieces. We also got a brand new website over the summer that looks a lot better than our old one and is easier to navigate. Design-wise, we focused a lot last semester on doing pull-quotes and cut-ins with as many articles as possible, but those were just jpeg images, so they weren’t really optimized for the web. So this semester we discovered how to create pull-quotes and cut-ins in html, so they look a lot better on the site. We also figured out how to use JavaScript in our site for some nice interactive graphics like bar charts, pie charts and more. So we’ve been working on getting those kind of graphics up with multiple stories a week which has been super exciting! I hope to find more ways to work with our online content because there’s so many cool things you can do with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and it’s something we’d love to continue improving on.
D.S.: The Daily Emerald is actually officially named the Emerald Media Group. We’re pushing priority for web content through multimedia engagement and using every major social media platform.
E.A.: Our paper is trying to adapt. Last semester was the first time we had a web editor, and that was me, so I think that was the first time that people really understood the importance of getting content in fast. We have a content management system and people sometimes ignored the stuff that’s hard understand, but the stuff that’s hard to understand was the stuff that really mattered to our website, and I really taught people how to use the CMS. We have also been doing a lot more build-outs, because our web editor this year is a computer programmer, and he’s been really helpful with big projects that involve a lot of code and multimedia. We’re currently redesigning our website, and that’s supposed to launch over the summer.
C.B.: Personally, since I’m editorial designer I don’t have a lot to do with web content. But recently we have started making graphs or charts web-friendly so that they are able to be used for both print and online. We also sometimes design headers for the different web sections on our website.
L.N.: The D.O. added a digital team to our in-house staff in 2015 and it grows significantly with each passing semester. The section now includes two digital designers, who work with section editors and our video staff to produce a variety of graphics and visuals for our website and social media. Over the past year, the digital staff has increasingly experimented with 360 video, Snapchat stories, Facebook Live, alternative story formats online and myriad social media visuals, from quote cards on Twitter to graphic videos on Facebook.
What are the biggest challenges you face in running the visuals department of your student paper?
A.D.: The biggest challenge for me is trying to balance the desire to produce my own work while also managing my staff. A lot of the spreads with visual potential go to the special projects designer or the senior designer because I don’t have the time to do what I want with these spreads.
S.H.: Balancing all the moving parts! There’s always a million and one things happening at once in the newsroom, and making sure that all my designers have content, know what they’re doing, and are getting all their work in on time can be tricky. It requires coordinating with them about their work and getting them in contact with the right reporters and editors, critiquing their graphics and pages and helping brainstorm new and fun ideas for the paper, and chatting with section editors and the executive team about longer-term design goals and plans. Another big challenge is making sure that we don’t fall into a design rut. It’s easy to get comfortable designing the same kind of pages every single week because they look good enough and are quick to throw together. But a big thing that I try to push all the time is to always be coming up with new ideas because it’s so important to push the limits of what’s cool and new and innovative to make our paper even better than it already is.
D.S.: Like I said, I’m a photojournalist and videographer. I feel quite confident in my abilities when it comes to knowing photo and video, but graphic design with deliberation is new territory. I was really worried that it would inhibit my ability to lead when it came to managing print design, but if anything, I think it helps. I’m still doing self-assigned graphic design homework so I can keep up with the designers, but I think me asking so many questions and having no steadfast framework yet brings opportunity. There’s an immense novelty, an opportunity to lead and a wonderful team that is passionate and patient.
Overall though, my biggest challenge is just making sure there’s enough time for quality and that usually boils down to making sure there is a good flow of information between writers and the visual folk.
E.A.: One of the biggest challenges is working with the mindset of the staff. When you’re print-oriented, it can be hard to understand what your designer needs and why it’s important to get things online so quickly. I want people to think about the best way to tell a story.
C.B.: I think often since it is a deadline business and being a student paper, everyone has classes and other clubs, so we don’t always have as much time to design graphics as we would like. The information for alternative story formats is always given to us late so we a lot of times have to scramble on deadline to come up with something visually appealing.
L.N.: We can always plan better, and coming up with creative and engaging visuals for every page can be a challenge. This goes for design, too. You just have to keep pushing all photographers, illustrators and designers to think creatively and come up with new approaches each night.
Where do you find design inspiration?
A.D.: I find design inspiration from RedEye Design, NewsPageDesigner, Pinterest and Google search. You can find the most inspiring design ideas with a simple search. I also look to my mentors (professors, former editors and colleagues).
S.H.: Everywhere!! Inspiration is everywhere! But when I’m specifically looking for it, I’m all over Pinterest. I follow a ton of great design boards that range from news design to infographics to posters to fine art. So whenever I’m stuck, I usually browse through Pinterest until I find something that inspires and unsticks me. I also really enjoy going through other student newspapers on Issuu, or browsing through the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages (which is the coolest thing since sliced bread) to see what professional newspapers are doing. As for specific newspapers, I love looking at The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Virginian Pilot and The Epoch Times.
D.S.: My design inspiration is really reflective of my shooting style. It’s detail-oriented and often begins with a “what-if”.
E.A.: I love Pinterest and I use it all the time. I also like to use NewsPageDesigner, and I am really inspired by my previous creative director, Anna Boone. I think she’s an amazing designer and I often look back on the stuff that she did for our paper.
C.B.: We find design inspo all over the place. When we come across something we like from the internet, we usually screenshot it and save it to a special design folder. Pinterest, Instagram and other design inspiration websites are where we look when we need help.
L.N.: Pinterest is my go-to inspiration source, and I often encourage my staff to look for ideas there. I also follow a bunch of editorial design accounts on Twitter and Instagram that I browse for inspiration all the time, from The Washington Post to The Boston Globe. I definitely encourage any print designer to follow as many of these news design accounts as they can find.
What’s your favorite part of working for your student paper?
A.D.: My favorite part of working for my student paper and is that I get to contribute to my college campus by doing what I love. I’ve made great connections in the past few years that I’ll have for a lifetime. Also, I learn something new every week, whether it be visually or informationally.
S.H.: My favorite part about working on Elon’s student newspaper has been the amazing people I’ve met and community I’ve become involved with. Getting to work alongside other motivated and passionate journalists inspires me to continuously be putting out my best work, even if I’ve had a bad week. And all the people I work with have become some of my closest friends and are a wonderful source of support for both news and non-news related activities.
D.S.: If I’m perfectly honest, I was pretty disconnected from and unhappy with college life before I found the Emerald. But now I have something to be proud of. I have a home, I have my people.
E.A.: Just the people. It’s pretty cliché, but we’re all going through the same things and can relate to each other on every level when other people cannot. Working together as a team everyday toward the same goal is really rewarding.
C.B.: Being able to produce content that goes out and is seen by a large number of people is really cool. Creating clips that I can use and submit to future employers is really beneficial. Also being able to work with other MSU students in my field and passionate about what they do is a great way to network and create relationships.
L.N.: The people. I’ve had some incredible design opportunities during the past two years at The D.O., but my time here would be nothing without my co-workers. People who work at daily newspapers are the truly best kind — passionate, talented, quirky, supportive — and I’m so grateful to call them my best friends. Newspapers and the people I’ve worked with at them have shaped so much of who I am today.
What advice do you have to high school or college students who are interested in exploring news design?
A.D.: Here’s my advice: news design is a great place to start for any designer. You learn how to quickly and efficiently manipulate type, photos, illustrations and graphics. I’ve come to learn that having experience in news design is impressive in the design world because it’s almost always on deadline and there’s so many graphic elements that go into it. Since it’s so comprehensive, you can apply what you learn in newspaper design to pretty much any other design medium.
I had no interest in newspapers when I joined The Post, I only did it so I could be involved in something outside of my classes. I’ve learned more working for my student newspaper than I have at any of my classes or at other publications on campus. You can also do so much with news design; I feel like people have this assumption that it’s boring, but it’s really not. News design is a beautiful medium when done right and it will always be around, people live for the news.
S.H.: Get involved, get inspired and collaborate. You get the best experience and practice by working for a student publication instead of just doing design for your classes. And don’t be afraid to go the extra mile in your designs. Actively be searching for new ideas, designs, and layouts, because that’s what pushes you to do your best work. Everything I consider to be my best work has come from a lot of searching through the internet to see what other people have done, and how I can take the best parts of other designs and bring them together into something new. And always be collaborating with other people. Friends and colleagues can bring fresh insight and ideas, especially for news design. You need to be talking to and collaborating with editors and reporters to find the best ways to accurately and interestingly represent their stories. And the most important piece of advice I have? Have fun!
D.S.: Consume, consume, consume design. Always ask questions. Keep a sketchbook. Get weird.
E.A.: Don’t say no because you think you’re going to fail, just say yes and see how much you’re going to learn. Someone will teach you, and you’ll learn and you’ll get better, and you’ll help other people some day. Take all the opportunities you can and learn from them.
C.B.: I would tell them to get as involved in it as you can. There are lots of clubs and classes that give you hands on experience in the design field. The more clips and experience that you’re able to get, the better.
L.N.: Get involved at your student newspaper or magazine as soon as you can! I can’t emphasize enough how much you can learn about editorial design in just one night on the job. Design courses can teach you a lot about design principles and how to use different software, but absolutely nothing beats real-life experience.
