A look at the judging thus far. Photos by Amanda Wilson, an MU grad student.
Judges Reagan Branham, Greg Branson and Gayle Grinn, all left, discuss feature finalists while Joy Mayer and MU design students watch.
Greg Branson and Gayle Grinn pick non-daily covers in round one.
Judges Reagan Branham, Greg Branson and Gayle Grinn look at non-daily covers.
Greg Branson and Reagan Branham discuss non-daily cover finalists.
Technical flaws seem to be pulling some entries down, despite good concepts and creativity.
Gayle measured picas with her fingers a few times so far, visually disappointed when pages she liked have uneven whitespace or misaligned objects.
“There’s small problems” “It could have been more precise” -Gayle
Color choices, and how they look in print, have taken down at least two entries, one with a black background on the cover and one with “100% yellow” that “kills” Greg.
“Something you should pass on to everybody is that black doesn’t print well in newsprint, just fyi”- Greg
For non-daily feature pages:
“The thing that killed this category more than anything else was typography- some nice pages got killed.” — Greg
They described the the bad type as illegible, overworked, overwrought and said designers were trying to hard to find that fun that really matches the subject matter. Some pages had too many weights.
“If you look at the ones that we are saying are our favorites, they are straightforward types, no novelty,” — Reagan
Gayle said larger papers are paring down their fonts, and smaller papers can look smart if they are consistent with type. “Simplicity is fine.”
Judging is underway! Check out our judges’ thoughts on the first few categories:
Quick to spot a fill-in:
“We have nothing else to put on our cover today, what are we gonna do? it ends up being a cliché almost” — Greg Branson
Want designers to make the connection with conceptual covers:
“What does the death penalty have to do with a martini?” — Greg
Careful with color:
“You’ve gotta know your presses when you’re designing.” — Reagan
Nice shot:
“I admire the effort, the fun, the attempt.” — Gayle Grin on an inside news page.
All of the finalists in the non-daily news cover category were magazine-style and tabloid-shaped, not conventional news pages.
Bio: Reagan Branham has worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the past seven years as a features and sports designer. Her work has been recognized in state-wide and international design competitions, including a Silver Medal from SND. She has been a facilitator for several years for SND, and was a news judge for the 2008 competition. Before moving to St. Louis, Reagan was a news designer for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
She caught up with us for a few questions before the contest started this morning.
COLLEGE: Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill.
WHAT SHE DID: “I worked for the student paper. I went in there on day one freshman year and started reporting and worked until the day I graduated. I did a little bit of everything in a small journalism program. Reporter, copy editor, columnist, and I eventually became managing editor and then editor.”
WHY SHE’S NOT A REPORTER: “This is how I knew I did not want to be a reporter: I think it was maybe my junior year, I was one of the top editors… and we had a cop in town get shot and so I went out to the hospital to get a quote from the family to call in to the paper… and I totally chickened out, I did not talk to the family. So I called in and I lied and said nobody would speak to me.”
COLLEGE DESIGN: “We used Quark. I’ve never done non-computerized design. I think the creative parts really appealed to me, coming up with solutions and getting all the pieces at the last minute and making those work.”
HER ADVICE: “One of my biggest regrets in college is not taking art classes. Working with non-journalism design students is a good thing. Take ad design or art classes,… it’s really good to expose yourself to that in college. I was working at the paper, so we all thought about newspaper design and that was design to us.”
WHY SHE LOVES FEATURES DESIGN: “It’s super creative, I love brainstorming stories that don’t just have a photo to design with, I love when I get to help art direct photos and be in the studio.” She likes “getting to do an illustration, drawing something. I’ve never had that kind of freedom before because I used to do sports and that’s deadline, much more straightforward.
TODAY: Regan said she’s nervous about judging with people watching- especially student designers whose work is out there. (We promised to be quiet!) “I’m happy to explain why I voted for something or not voted for something.”
FAVORITE FONT: “I’m not a font nerd. Boo to novelty fonts, though.”
ABOUT THE POST’S ACCENT COLOR, RED: “Any time I can change it, I’m gonna do it. But sometimes that’s the only color I know what it’s gonna look like- we have old presses, too.”
Tucker Forum. Gannett Hall. Missouri School of Journalism. 8:13 a.m.
Print judging will kick off a little after 9 a.m. central time today. Check back throughout the day for updates, photos and audio interviews with the judges (Gayle Grin, Greg Branson and Reagan Branham). For real-time results, see ssnd.missouri.edu.
2008 marks the 20th annual College News Design Contest. It is hosted at the Missouri School of Journalism each spring. The top finishers in the Designer of the Year categories, for both daily and non-daily papers, win a travel grant to the Society for News Design annual workshop. This fall, SND (a sponsor of the contest) will be meeting in Las Vegas in September.
Check back here all day on Tuesday, April 15 (we know, tax day…) for updates during the judging of the Student Society for News Design’s national design contest! We’ll find out what the judges have to say about what’s hot and what’s not in college news design. Find out more about the contest and our judges at our site.
