Designing for a tragedy

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In newsrooms across the country and around the world, the events of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, caused shock, fear and confusion. They also galvanized the media into action.

It has happened before - Pearl Harbor, the invasion of South Korea, the Challenger disaster - and, as in the past, we were up to the challenge.

However, the design of newspapers has come a long way since those events. The tools we have and the instantaneous communication now available are both a curse and a blessing. A curse because we are inundated and overloaded with information, much of it confusing if not downright contradictory. A blessing in that we can provide information better and faster than ever before.

How did U.S. newspapers fare in the design of their pages and sections on Sept. 11 and 12? Having looked at hundreds of papers, I found that we did what we needed to do.

No newspaper did a bad job.

Many took different approaches.

None missed the mark entirely.

Many newspapers put out Extras and afternoon editions on Sept. 11. The striking fact of those was the constraint in coverage - both in words and pictures. The reporting level was steady, and the visual support gave readers what they needed.

This was a visual event, chilling, calculated and graphic. Every newspaper used pictures, used them large, and generally used them well.

From a design standpoint, there were four major categories of design approach I have seen in the papers of Sept. 11 and 12. I'll call these: funeral, dominant art, dominant headline, and reportage. There are sub-categories depending on the newsroom decision to emphasize the physical destruction or the human aspect - both appropriate.

The funeral fronts are those relying on black to make the images stand out and provide a visual sense of the tragedy and our loss as a nation. They certainly conveyed to their readers the magnitude of the event and created a somber counterpoint to the activity in the image.

Examples of this approach are Florida Today and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. A sub-set of these elicit almost the same visual response but lack the black counterpoint. This was the approach of The Oakland (MI) Press, USA TODAY, and the Erie (PA) Times-News.

The dominant art pages are those using 60 percent or more of the front to display the chilling images of the day. The most powerful, and most often used, are the impact images of the World Trade Center. Many of the designers of these fronts used a combination of type and images to communicate the reality of the devastation and the scope of the tragedy. However, it is the art that draws and haunts the readers.

Papers exemplifying this approach are The Day in New London, Connecticut, The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and The Tampa (FL)Tribune.

The dominant headline fronts all use large art, but the power of the event is initially communicated through the power of the words - most often just one. This becomes even more evident when you look at these fronts as they would be displayed in the rack or on the newsstand. Just the upper half of the page and the power of the headline tell us that life changed in a couple of terrifying moments.

Some of the very powerful fronts that used this technique are The Examiner of San Francisco, The Sun in Baltimore, The Washington Times, and The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey.

Many newspapers ratcheted the tone down by using text on 50 percent or more of the page. This reportage, or standard approach of images and text, does not have as much impact as the other categories but certainly provides a more thoughtful and sober approach to the events. Papers who took this approach generally used one dominant photo - at most two. Any more than this and it would have looked like "just another news day."

Newspapers opting for a more somber approach include The Santa Fe New Mexican, The Sun, and The Washington Post.

Some critics of the media might say it was hard to screw up an event of this size and scope. Not so. To our credit, the papers in this country, and many from overseas, "designed" their pages. They made it easy for the reader to grasp the magnitude of the terror, the tragedy, destruction and death.

If I have any criticisms of any pages I've seen, they would be few. One negative was photos mortised into other photos. This just garbles the visual communication of both pictures and decreases the impact of one, if not two, powerful images. Another was the left column rail that didn't disappear. In an event of this magnitude, the briefs package of other, non-related, material doesn't belong on page one. Get rid of it.

Several papers I saw had "side-saddle" cutlines with a width of 5.5 picas. Most of them couldn't even fit a complete word on one line. This is a waste of space; enlarge the image or make room for a legible cutline.

Sadly, we may have more segments of this story to design. But if the quality is as high as it was the first week, the readers will certainly be served.

pnesbitt@verizon.net