Internship series: The Virginian-Pilot — Week 3
Clean design and last-minute changes were this week’s main takeaways
I’ve been getting into the rhythm of life at The Pilot this week: I come in and know where to sit, how to get started and how the content management system works (mostly). Getting past all of the introductory stuff is nice, because I can spend less time figuring out logistics like how to get assignments created and pictures attached and more time focusing on the layout and design of the pages.
I also had a bit of an epiphany last week. I’ve been pretty nervous trying to make sure my pages stand out, look nice and really pop. I’ve been wanting to do cutouts, overlap text and photos and add flair to pages, but after discussing one of the front pages I did with the director of presentation, I realized that instead of focusing on added flair and fun design details, I need to focus more on helping the reader understand the point of the article.
It’s one of those things where you know design isn’t just to “make things pretty” (and hearing people say that that’s what design is makes me cringe), but it’s still an easy trap to fall into. So last week I started to shift gears and focus on making my pages stand out for more important reasons by getting the point of the story across to the reader in a digestible and understandable way.
Keeping it clean
This front page was part of what started that shift. For the hurricane story at the top, I really wanted to try out this effect I saw on Pinterest where the clouds of the storm overlap over the headline. But in the example, the storm article was 75 percent of the front page, and not reduced to a small chunk above the flag. So when talking about it to the director of presentation, he made a good point that it probably would just look like the printer messed up the type, instead of an intentional bit of Photoshop work. So I left that idea behind and opted for a fade instead, which, while simpler, was still effective, easier to read and looked more intentional.
For the rest of the page, I decided to focus on simplicity and effectiveness. I had a small lead-in before the main headline of the church article, factboxes with multiple stories and clean teasers on the front.
It’s not the wildest or artsiest front page of all time, but it’s clear to the reader what they need to look at and what they need to know, and that’s what’s most important.
Constant changes
Last-minute A1 changes seem to be following me around. Last week it was the sentence overturning for two different men on the same day, and this week it was a 30-inch story that came in at 10 inches instead — and that story was supposed to be the A1 centerpiece. So, we had to do some last minute adjustments.
The page on the left originally was supposed to have the funeral photo and accompanying article lead the page, but everything needed to be flip-flopped after it came in short. Instead of just having one of the Battle of Midway articles on the front above the flag, the two were instead packaged together and placed in the middle, while the funeral article was moved to the bottom, and the “Star Wars” wedding story was moved to the top.
It was a lot of work, because the jump pages had to be reworked as well, and more photos, factboxes and cutlines had to be used. We were also down-to-the-wire when sending the pages to the printing press because it took so long for the page to get printed and proofed due to all these changes.
But that’s one of those days where you learn the most, because you learn that that’s how news works. It changes constantly, and being able to adapt is a great skill that I’m happy to learn. When I got back to the office on Monday, the director of presentation told me I did a nice job, so it was all worth it!
This is the third installment in our internship series, where our contributors recount their news design internship experiences in weekly updates.
