Newspaper article collage inspires new design, layout

When it Speaks
By Maria Kinsley
Editor in Chief

Last week I spent hours in The Stylus office pouring through piles of newspapers for examples of good layout and design.  I taped articles that struck me to a wall, forming a giant collage. 

It looks pretty cool. Feel free to stop in and take a look. 

As I surveyed my handiwork I felt a rush of inspiration.  I couldn’t wait to attempt the cool techniques I found.  My ultimate goal wasn’t just to make the office look colorful and interesting, but to inspire the Stylus staff to want our paper to look as good as the papers on that wall.

Most of the papers are student newspapers I picked up at the National College Media Convention I attended in St. Louis last semester.  I have had a bag of these papers in my office for months and decided to sort through them.  I figured the best way to ensure the staff sees what our colleagues are up to was to put it up on the wall where they would have to look at it.

While at the media convention I attended a lot of design workshops.  Plus, I was really stoked that one of the keynote speakers was Tim Harrower, the author of one of the best journalism texts ever created, The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook.  A lot of the schools in attendance offered design classes and had design positions on their newspaper, which is unfortunately something Brockport lacks. 

I would have loved to take design classes.  I am certain the availability of design classes would improve the quality of the campus paper and other student publications, as well as add another important element to the résumés of Brockport graduates.

Not all the papers I posted are student publications, however.  As I was working one of my fellow editors stopped in.  I showed her a cool fashion page layout I found and she replied, “Yeah, well it’s The New York Times!”

I think The Stylus staff is concerned that I am daydreaming up unattainable goals.  I realize, of course, that we do not have a fraction of the resources available to The New York Times and that The Stylus will never resemble the quality of the aforementioned newspaper giant.  This will not stop me, however, from striving to inspire us to continually improve.

When I told my boyfriend about the collage I made, he said he wouldn’t know a well laid out page if it hit him.  This got me thinking about whether our efforts to learn layout and design are in vain since most readers know little about them. I concluded, however, that if given two newspaper pages side by side most readers would be able to tell which was laid out better, even if they couldn’t verbalize how or why.

The layout and design of The Stylus has improved tremendously, and it will continue to improve as we learn more.  Our faculty advisor is supposed to loan me some of his design books and the handy Newspaper Designer’s Handbook is always in the office.  My collage is not quite finished, I plan to add more examples as I come across them.

The other walls in the office are covered with well laid out and designed pages of The Stylus.

I plan to add to those walls before my time here is through as well.