Things finally clicked.

This is the front page of the first
issue of last year's Warrior Ledger.

Granted, I've had quite a few of those over the last two weeks. Light, emotion, composition. Click. InDesign templates. Click. SNO and online editions. Click.

Really, my brain has been going clickity click for the entire institute as I finally got a grip on what things that were merely vague and often ominous concepts to me finally snapped into place.

Tracy Collins' session on newspaper design fundamentals was another one of those moments, I mentally refer to them as "major click" moments.

My EIC and I review each printed issue of our newspaper with both journalism 1 and 2 after it is first released. I have to admit, the first two times we went over each page together with the rest of the class probably taught me more than my students. That's how the entire first semester went, which was both great, because I learned a lot, but also worrying to me, because I never felt like I was "really" getting it, let alone able to teach it.

In comparison, here is our first
page of issue three, after
complete design makeover.

Tracy Collins' session on design fundamentals actually got me there. I now know the difference between kerning and tracking, squeezing and  leading.

Tracy Collins' session on design fundamentals actually got me there. I now know the difference between kerning and tracking, squeezing and  leading.

This, along with his critique and learning how to create pages that will be clear and reader-friendly, while innovative, without too much noise really equipped me with what I need to know to help my new staff build on the great work their predecessors have accomplished during the last year.

Even though by now it makes me cringe, I like to go back to our first issue of last year to see just how far we have come, both as far as content  and design are concerned. Lucky for me as a rookie journalism teacher, I did have an extremely capable EIC who re-imagined and re-designed our nameplate and overall outline not once, but twice, after the first attempt proved to be less effective than we had wished for.

Next year, I will be working with a new senior staff whom I built up over this last year and we will be keeping a lot of the good things that are already happening with The Warrior Ledger, but they are also willing to experiment with new things, from setting up an online publication to adding new elements to the physical paper.

In terms of design for pint, I feel Tracy has given us a great toolkit and basic understanding of design principles that we can directly apply in InDesign and build on from here on out.

Instead of vaguely terrified, by now I'm actually really excited of trying out all of these new things that I have learned during the last two weeks and I feel like I'm actually, dare I say qualified? I'm equipped with amazing tools and ideas, that's for sure.

Stephanie Floch
Taylorsville High School
SLC, Utah