The design guru

Tracy Collins teaches the 10 Commandments of Type.

     I found Tracy Collins’ session tremendously interesting and informative.
     A common theme in my blogs has been how much the industry has changed and page design is dramatically different. The technology forced page design to change, but as Collins said the birth of USA Today in 1982 was the catalyst of page design change.
        I went to the News Page Designer website and signed up (my memberships is pending).  It’s an educational and entertaining site of 6,000 members. There are groups for special interests, and many foreign pages to gaze upon. Typography is very different when looking at pages written in Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic, etc.
Besides groups, there are blogs, job announcements, portfolios, and videos that are an eyeful. The news page blog has some really cool layouts. I especially liked some the sports-page spreads.
      It seems that Gannett’s move toward centralizing design studios is at the leading edge of where the industry is going. The Phoenix studio is one of five Gannett design centers that produce papers — the others are Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Asbury Park, New Jersey; and Louisville, Kentucky. Other media groups (Cox, McClatchy, Media General) are moving that way. The consolidation is a way to streamline and cut costs. Of course none of that would be possible without the technology.
       It would seem the design area of the business will be a growth area for our students. Collins had to hire 40 designers when he took over in Phoenix, and many of those were fresh out of college. He has 60 plus designers pumping out 14,000 pages per week. That sounds absolutely insane.
        It’s a brave new world. Although having just taught Aldous Huxley’s novel last semester, I’m not going to hang myself in a lighthouse just because I no longer fit in to this brave new world.

Jerry L. Miller
Sparks High School
Sparks, Nevada