Internship Series: The Virginian-Pilot — Week 11
We’re living in an online world, so let’s design for the internet
In the second to last week of my internship, I was pretty excited that I was scheduled to work with the online team. I wasn’t really sure what I would be doing with them, but I knew it would be good experience to do design beyond typical print work that I’ve already been doing.
A change of pace
Day one was learning the ropes of what happens with the online team. I helped put together some photo galleries, wrote some web headlines and did a little bit of copy editing. I also called a few people trying to get information about a tree tour at a local cemetery, which was my first time calling someone and introducing myself as a person with The Virginian-Pilot!
The most surprising event of the day was that I actually did a little bit of reporting. Since this was the day that Trump announced his transgender military ban, The Pilot’s digital team was reaching out to locals about their reactions. One of the voices they were looking for was someone who had served in the military and supported Trump’s ban.
After doing a bit of digging through Facebook comments, I found someone who fit the bill. I messaged him and asked him for a comment about the ban and a few other questions about his military career. The quote I got ended up being used in the article, and I got a contributed line too! This was totally different than anything else I had done during my internship, and it was pretty cool to get my name in the paper even if it wasn’t for design.
Designing for breaking news
On July 28, two different cities on the Outer Banks (known locally as OBX) lost power. The Pilot immediately started writing an article that was updated throughout the day as our reporters talked to a variety of people and visitors who were on the island.
Back at the office, I worked with the online editor to create section headers for each update that were placed online and tweeted out on. Each design was black (because it’s a blackout!) and contained a simple illustration, the time and headline for the section.
I really enjoyed making these, and it was one of the first times illustrations were integrated with online articles and used on social media. It was also a great experience working with breaking news to help deliver continual updates on such a big story.
The same day, The Pilot released an article about how the Norfolk government shredded documents relating to a FBI subpoena. Since there were few photos to accompany the article, I designed a pull quote graphic for social media that looked as though it was going through a shredder.
This pull quote used typical print design styles so it stayed consistent with the overall design. The shredder image was used in the print design as well for pull quotes, a timeline and a fact box.
It was pretty cool to get to use a graphic in the print product and online, and see how it could easily be edited to fit both platforms.
Overall, getting to work on the digital side of things was a really great experience. I also worked on making a new logo for the high school sports newsletter, Instagram story templates and images for social media when articles didn’t have photos to accompany them.
Next week, I get to work with the online team and continue designing for social media, as well as working on longer term digital projects that will be used after I leave. Hopefully other designers will get to start designing for the website too. It’s a very different kind of work, but one that’s just as rewarding.
This is the eleventh installment in our internship series, where our contributors recount their news design internship experiences in weekly updates.
