SND Goodies.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under design
There’s bundles of information and inspiration to hand in these handouts from the SND(Society for News Design) conference that took place earlier this year. It’s geared towards designers, but can easily be applied to us as photojournalists.
I found these PDFs especially useful.
Storytelling in print and multimedia
Jenn Crandall (washingtonpost.com’s onBeing) project and Kelli Sullivan (Los Angeles Times projects including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Altered Oceans”) show how words and images can be combined to create compelling narratives.
Download PDF(3.6MB) of Kelli Sullivan’s talk.
A few things worth highlighting in the handout:
Communication - Be a conduit for the various disciplines
Become a part of the discussion early and often
Partner with people who determine space in the paper to ensure you get what you need for your project.
Editing - Look at every item and weigh it against one another.
Edit for redundancy and push to move the story forward.
“What makes this project unique?” Build on that theme.
Collaboration - Need I say more?
Planning - Get out of your chair and make it happen.
Be proactive.
Look ahead to the budgets and ask about items you might want to work on. (How often do you get photo assignments that have us there when nothing is going on? Much like Renee C. Beyer said at the Flying Short Course reschedule your assignments for when something is going on.)
Scott Minister who’s just up the road in Columbus, OH had a great handout on sports design. His advice might as well been written for photographers too.
Download PDF (6.7 MB) of Scott Minister’s talk.
A few things worth noting that also reinforce what I’ve taken away from my picture story class this quarter:
Let the content drive your decisions. (You have a vertical to fit this hole? Shouldn’t happen when the content is driving the design.)
Strong ideas are the most valuable commodity that we have.
Ideas come from things that you’re passionate about and they also come from words, so be well-read. (Everyday I read the NY Times looking for ideas that could lead to strong visuals.)
Make planning a priority. Always have a reservoir of ideas. (Need to keep my ideas in one place.)
Be prepared. (Every year you know the paper will have something dealing with Valentine’s Day, etc so plan ahead and do something special.)
A healthy, working relationship between the photo and art departments is imperative to the success of the paper. (Communication and Collaboration once again.)
One last handout I found helpful was on creating an effective portfolio. OU professor, Terence Oliver, had a hand in this one. (Had to get my OU plug in somewhere.)
Creating an effective portfolio
Though we’re in the presentation business, many of us struggle to present our own work. Tips for both students and working professionals from author Sara Eisenman (“Building Design Portfolios”) and Terence Oliver (Professor, Ohio University).
Download PDF
Hopefully you find the handouts as useful as I have.
Further Reading:
Tags: design, inspiration, journalism, photojournalism
One Response to “SND Goodies.”
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Jenn Says:
November 4th, 2007 at 8:05 pmTim
Thanks. This is really helpful.
