There are some places in the world, however, that it’s a little more difficult to enter the competition.

Take India for instance. The news is a thriving part of the cultural landscape with thousands of titles. For a news designer to enter SND’s competition, though, is far above what that person earns at their job. SND would like to help so we are trying an experiment.

SND India’s region director, T.K. Sajeev Kumar has reached out to news designers across India to submit their best work to him. A small group of judges will review that work and nominate for entry into SND’s competition. Meanwhile, we are using the crowdsourcing site Razoo, a site for non-profits to raise money, to help these designers put their work up against the best in the world.

If you’d like to help, here’s how. Outreach to different parts of the world has always been one of SND’s core principles. We have region directors from all over the world.

The background

Despite the growth of new platforms, there is still a strong preference for print media among news consumers in India. One supporting factor is the high literacy rate and the other is the culture of regular newspaper reading from the Colonial times. There has been a steady, promising increase in readership which makes India a fertile land suitable for new publications.
However accessing high-level training and support for Indian journalists can be a challenge given cost and distance.
For the last two years the Society for News Design (snd.org) has held training events and outreach led by T.K. Sajeev Kumar. Here is a report from one event last year.
Supporting Indian news designers to compete against the best news designers in the world is a natural next step.
SND’s Best of News Design
Every year SND hosts the Best of News Design competition bringing together judges to assess thousands of entries from more than 30 countries. Each entry costs $15.

Collecting entries

T.K. Sajeev Kumar, SND’s regional director in India, is collecting work — these are news, sports and features pages, illustrations and infographics from designers around India. With your help we would like to enter the best of these pages into the competition, a cost that is otherwise prohibitive for these journalists.

Indian newspaper industry by the numbers

India’s thriving, colorful culture is also a thriving news culture. Here are some basics:

• Registered newspapers: 14,508
• Registered English-language newspapers: 1,406
• Other-language newspapers: 13,102
• Hindi-language newspapers: Hindi, 7,910
• Registered magazines: 82,237

Wayne Kamidoi went home late Wednesday night feeling apprehensive about the section cover he had designed during his shift as Sports Art Director at The New York Times. By Thursday morning, the page featuring a headline and a large chunk of white space — in reaction to the news that no players were voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year — was generating social media buzz and made an appearance on ESPN’s Sports Center.

Kamidoi shared some of his thoughts about the page in a phone interview early Thursday afternoon. Here are a few of the highlights.

On the idea of a mostly-blank page:

This was not meant to be the execution of a groundbreaking or original idea. The Beatles’ White Album comes to mind. The news, or lack of, dictated the presentation.

You aren’t necessarily looking for stuff sometimes, but you see something like three months ago and you remember it. You don’t necessarily remember where you saw it, but it’s an idea. I always agreed with the idea that if you’re going to borrow something, you have to improve on it.

On the headline:

The headline for the paper’s first national edition read “Welcome to Cooperstown.” [This was the version shown on ESPN’s Sports Center broadcast.] We were kind of worried about whether that was clear enough, so we changed it to “And the Inductees Are …” for the first city edition at 10 p.m. I’m glad we ran out of time, or we’d still be working on the headline.

On the reaction the page has gotten:

I guess it’s the new world of social media meeting the old world of news print. … If this happened five or six years ago, people might have talked about it a year later after the SND contest instead of two hours later. In this case, the debate began as soon as Ben Hoffman posted the page on his Facebook account and it started to get shared around.

On whether The New York Times sports section is taking more visual risks:

Definitely. Joe Sexton became Sports Editor maybe a year and half ago. This page fits his MO. … He’s old school in that he cares about print, but he’s also trying to be ahead of the curve and visuals play a big part in him pushing the envelope.

On how the page evolved:

The very first versions we looked at had a series of half mug shots or a gallery of small faces the bottom with a headline of  “The New Faces of Cooperstown.” It was Joe who said if we were going that direction, we should just take the photos off.

On his favorite thing about the page:

I liked the names at the bottom in small type. I thought of it like the AP Top 25, when there’s a list of other teams in agate type at the bottom. Given the marquee names that were in that agate type, I felt it made a statement.

On his least favorite thing about the page:

It didn’t have a big photo of Mike Piazza. Awesome player to watch. Only suspicions kept him out. Unlike the others, he carried himself with class.

On whether the page had more impact in The New York Times compared to a smaller paper:

I always feel people think too much into that, whether it’s The New York Times or a smaller paper. In this particular case, you’re sort of making a statement. I compare this  to something you’d see on our Op/Ed page that’s sort of an opinion based on a  stand-alone visual. That’s pretty much what this presentation did.

On what many people may not realize:

One of the criticisms is that the page didn’t convey any information, which is something I always think about. But because the news story began on A1 and jumped to an inside page, we didn’t want to ignore it on our sports cover. So we felt like we got the news on the front page and then this visual opinion piece on the sports cover.

On how this page compares to other favorites that he has designed:

There have been other pages I was excited about because I knew they were going to work. On this one, to be honest, I wasn’t overly confident about the result. … I’ve done pages where it was a total pain to put together, and you get nothing. It’s like, “Do you know how hard that was to do?” But this one was so simple you almost don’t expect any real reaction.

It really wasn’t done with the idea that we’re going to shock everyone. And it’s not like it’s something that hasn’t been done before. In this case, I think it just gets seen more because it’s The New York Times and gets more widely distributed. I think it’s like you do it once. It’s your one time you do that and you move on to something else.

(Paul Wallen is Senior Features Designer and Art Director of Bay Magazine at the Tampa Bay Times. See examples of his work here.)

You know, if you’re like me, you’re 6-1 and named Josh.

Also if you’re like me, your first reaction to this morning’s New York Times sports front on the Baseball Hall of Fame passing over Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens went beyond the page itself. The thought process went something like this:

“Well. There’ll be a rush to praise this as the greatest thing to touch paper since, uh … well something cool that touches paper, I don’t know, I’m bad at metaphors, what do you want from me? … and there will be absolutely NO rush to talk critically about it. Aside from the J-School professors asking, ‘What do you think?’ to the chorus of ‘I think it works,’ nobody will try to learn from this. It’ll be great, and that’ll be the end of it.”

But maybe there should be.

There’s a case to be made that we could use this page to enhance communication throughout the world through excellence in visual journalism.

Why would we do that? Why would we use SND-owned bandwidth and today’s NYT sports front for anything besides a coronation?

That’s SND’s mission. It’s not hiding from it.

My impression from six years of blogging about sports design is that once folks form an opinion about page design, it’s pretty set there. Something like this, “You know, as a journalist, there are two sides to every debate. On one side of this argument, there are people who think this page is the (greatest, worst) page to ever come off a press. On the other side, are brain-dead idiots.”

Social media references to today’s NYT sports front include the following: Bold. Ballsy. Daring. Perfect.

Sports Editor Joe Sexton was quoted on ESPN this morning: “A striking, profound image of emptiness.”

So that’s the reaction. With that setup, what if we, as visual journalists, thought critically about this page today? What if, instead of praising it, we examined both the reasons for and against the approach. And what if we did all that, and then we formed our opinions about it, and we applied that to our jobs tonight?

Let’s give it a shot. There will be no conclusions drawn here. Only presenting both sides. It’s acceptable to love this page. It’s acceptable to dislike it. You want to hear empty praise of brilliance and daringness? That’s what Twitter, Facebook and blogs are for. You want to think critically and learn from it, back-and-forth? Let’s go.

It’s bold and unexpected. It grabs your attention

Make no mistake, the NYT’s Old Gray Lady moniker is as dated as baseball’s Hall of Fame selection process. The paper’s inside pages routinely set and raise the bar in print newspaper design, and the paper’s digital design does the same for visual journalism. See the paper’s series on Derek Boogaard from 2011 for a recent example. This page stops you as a reader. You have to hold that page in your hand, read the cutline and see what it’s all about, and in our postmodern, short-attention-span era, isn’t that what design should do?

It told readers nothing.

Well isn’t that what blank space does? It’s print’s original alternative, and NYC’s a hipster town anyway, right? That’s beside the point. The snub of the superstars was widely anticipated, and the Hall electing nobody had been predicted universally the day before (It’s also happened twice before). Read your paper’s runup stories. The NYT used three fourths of a page to tell us that nobody was selected, which if we didn’t know would happen, we knew was likely. A picture is worth a thousand words, and blank space is worth one sentence.

It’s a cover. What more NEEDED to be said out there?

Section fronts aren’t sitting in racks to sell papers. They don’t have substantial above/below the fold value. Sports fronts in particular, should be talkers. They should make you say to your neighbor at work, or the gas station attendant AFTER you buy the paper, “Wow. Check out what they did on their sports cover.” And that’s the daily print newspaper equivalent of paying it forward. That’s exactly what the Times got out of this page. Moreover, the NYT has the space inside for all the analysis it can provide. Nothing was shortchanged on this page.

It looks like a mistake.

There’s no argument here, it looks like a production error. It may also look like a profound page, but it looks like a production error too. I imagine NYT printing facilities around the country calling the desk Wednesday night going, “Hey, what’s up with this?” If you are a writer at the NYT, and you wrote a 40-inch analysis piece that DID further the news we already knew, how do you feel about being bumped inside for what looks like a mistake? How would you feel if a storytelling photo or graphic was bumped inside in favor of a story written in ipsum text to make a writing point?

It’s cutting-edge design.

One thing we talk about when competitions come around is pushing the limits of the medium. Taking a broadsheet piece of newsprint and telling a story in a way that hasn’t been done before is really difficult. There’s no question this happened here. How many times in a year can you say that about even really good print design, or even the best print design? Moreover, any newspaper, anywhere, even with a resource budget of zero dollars and zero cents, could have designed this page, and a lot of designers woke up today jealous, wondering why it never occurred to them to design a page like this.

It’s overblown.

That’s a hell of a lot of empty space to spend on Craig Biggio not getting in the Hall of Fame. It’s the equivalent of the Los Angeles Times doing a blank page tomorrow in its Calendar section on Affleck, Bigelo and Tarantino getting snubbed by the Oscar nominations. There’s so many questions about the viability of the Hall, so many opinions ripping its exclusivity, and so many issues surrounding an era of baseball history that we watched with our own eyes, and how baseball recognizes it, that we brush aside for blank space.

We could drag this debate out all day. The point isn’t that you have to agree with either side. The point is that you HAVE the debate. That we aren’t afraid to think critically about pages like this. It’s easy to rip on an obviously bad page and it’s easy to exalt a good one. It’s much harder to think critically, but that’s what we’re paid to do. That’s what news judgment is.

If you think about both sides of this coin and you love the page and would have done it, that’s good. But you got there from thinking like an editor. Same thing if you do all that and hate the page. We don’t exist to react like readers. We exist to examine all the possible reader reactions, and then turn around and apply them to our jobs, and that’s what this piece is about.

There’s a separate story to be written — largely outside of the context of this debate — about the process and how this page came together. I think we can learn from that too. But I have a day job, so that can wait a beat.

Iconic rock critic Jane Scott started a one-of-a-kind tradition in the early 1960s, covering the Beatles when no other major American newspaper had a music critic on staff. The only other names to hold the job in more than 50 years: Michael Norman, now the Plain Dealer’s Online Arts and Entertainment Editor, and John Soeder, who left in September to become a Senior Writer at Cleveland State University.

Now a well-known name in newspaper design circles joins this Plain Dealer short list.

After a decade as a designer at the Plain Dealer, Emmet Smith recently began his new role as pop music critic. He will be sharing duties in music-rich Cleveland with Chuck Yarborough, as announced in October by Assistant Managing Editor for Features Debbie Van Tassel.

Emmet officially left his position as Deputy Design Director/News just after the November 6 election. Since then he has been meeting club owners, visiting record stores, attending concerts and kicking off his local beat column.

We caught up with Emmet after a holiday visit to the 300-acre corn and bean farm owned by his wife Emily’s family. Emily also works at the Plain Dealer as a fashion editor and the couple just celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary. Family is a big part of Emmet and Emily’s life in Cleveland with two-year-old twin boys Henry and Eli. They will soon be joined by a third boy, due in February and code-named Storm Trooper.

As his boys slept in the back of the family’s minivan during the two-hour drive across snow-covered Northwest Ohio, Emmet talked to us about the big turn in his career.

Last Sunday, the Plain Dealer featured a centerpiece on the Rock Hall written by former news designer Emmet Smith.

Q. Take me back to the beginning. When did the possibility of this move first come to your attention?

A. They sent out an email that John Soeder was leaving and I quickly shot a note to my wife, kind of jokingly saying, “Hey, I’ll take that job.” Like most good ideas, it started a little bit in the realm of the ridiculous, but you realize, “Hey, maybe I actually would like that job.” So it went from there and I put my name in the hat. I did a couple reviews and a live news story when they announced the nominees for this year’s class for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a bit of a tryout, just to prove that a guy on the design side was in fact literate and could put together complete sentences.

I’ve been doing the design thing for about 10 years now and I got to a point where I had to decide if I wanted to keep going up in design or where do I want to end up? I think we need strong design leaders in newspapers, but we also need leaders in other departments that have design literacy. You look at what people like Denis Finley [Editor of the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, Va.] and Steve Cavendish [Editor of The City Paper in Nashville, Tenn.] have done, a lot of that comes from having a pretty good understanding of the entire process, not just one piece of it.

Q. What kind of questions did you have about the position before you made a decision?

A. I went out for coffee with John Soeder, who got and held the job while he had a young family. I think the thing that concerned me most about it was the effect it had on his family life. He actually felt like he saw his family more because most of his work was while they were asleep. There were a lot of days when he could write from home. When you’re a designer, you’re kind of chained to the office. On this side, there’s a little more flexibility if you need to pick up some milk or somebody gets sick.

Q. Did the possibility of Advance Publishing making changes similar to the ones they made in New Orleans, Alabama and Pennsylvania play any kind of role in your decision?

A. No, my wife and I have talked about it a lot. But we like Cleveland and we’re a little bit like ostriches with our heads in the ground about that whole thing. We’re going to do what we do, as well as we can, and let the chips fall where they may. If Advance wants to change things, they can run me out of town. But I’m not volunteering to go.

Q. Do you feel more secure at all in this position than you might have on the design side?

A. If anything, I think I feel a little bit less secure. I don’t have 10 years of clips and awards backing up why I should be in this job. On the other hand, Cleveland is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there’s a great local music scene and this is one of those critic beats that is intensely local. Could they give it up? Sure, they could give anything up. I’m not sure it would be the first thing they would give up … but you never know what’s going to happen.

Q. Were your design supervisors supportive?

A. David [Kordalski, AME/Visuals] was probably my biggest advocate in the process. I’m sure he was sad to see me go, but he knew that I’ve been trying to figure out what’s next for a while. He felt this was a good fit and a good next step.

Q. What kind of reaction have you gotten from friends and colleagues in the design community?

A. I think the way things are at newspapers right now, everybody was like, “Wow, that’s amazing. That’s great.” Anything that’s fresh, doing something you want instead of trying to hold on by your fingernails, I think gives people a little hope.

Q. Would you have considered a different kind of writing position if this opportunity hadn’t come up, or do you see this as a very unique situation that aligned with your interest in music?

A. I’ve thought about different reporting positions before. This one, in addition to my love and knowledge of music, offered the opportunity for criticism, commentary, feature writing, news reporting … so in one position, you get a pretty broad swath of the different kinds of writing and reporting that go on at a newspaper. This was pretty uniquely positioned between what I was looking for and what I could bring to it. I would have considered different writing positions, but this one is certainly an excellent fit.

Q. Had you done any reporting or writing before this?

A. Not since college. It’s a testament to the newspaper that they were willing to take a flyer on me.

Q. Why do you think they were willing to do that?

A. I’ve done what most good designers do. I tried to make pages look good but I also dug into stories made sure pages said the right thing. When I had conversations in the newsroom, I was rarely talking about the design so much as how we tell the story. You have enough of those conversations with people and they know that you’re thinking about the right things and asking the right questions, which translates into good stories.

One of Emmet Smith’s most notable pages.

Q. What has been the biggest adjustment for you so far in your transition to writing?

A. Knowing when to stop. There’s so much to do and so much I want to get done, it’s learning how to slow down, pace myself and pick my spots.

Q. Have the editors on the word side been helpful?

A. Oh yeah. I think I’ve actually had it easier than most new reporters because I already know the editors, have had conversations with them that didn’t involve pointing out my mistake. It’s a pretty self-directed beat, so they’ve been great about pointing me in the right direction while letting me do my thing.

Q. Do you find any similarities in the creative process between designing and writing?

A. You’re always looking for that nugget, whether it’s a story or designing a page. That one thing to build off of, the one really great idea. Whether it’s the right quote, the right angle, the right visual metaphor or whatever, as long as you’re trying to say the right thing then it just becomes the craft of getting there.

Q. What has surprised you the most so far?

A. That I like rap music. (Laughs) I didn’t expect that.

Q. That’s a good point. How hard is it to write about music that you aren’t personally interested in?

A. I’ve never been a huge genre guy, I kind of like a good song no matter what it’s dressed up in. I’m definitely a song guy though, I’ve got to have a good melody. But there isn’t that much that really grates on me. Except for the new Green Day, which is terrible. (Laughs)

Q. Do you have any ideas or goals as a pop music critic that you’re excited about?

A. I think it can be hard for designers to get the non-traditional story forms done. You know anything that isn’t a byline, 20 inches of copy and a contact line. I’m still getting my feet under me at this point, but I hope to produce more stories in non-linear ways. There are plenty of opportunities for that because music lends itself to lists, competitions and all sorts of story forms that are easier to digest.

Q. How do you feel about expressing your opinion as part of your job?

A. It’s hard because I’ve always been kind of on the proper journalist side of things. So having to form an opinion, articulate it, stand behind it and then answer all the phone calls in the morning (laughs) … has definitely been a different experience. I never once had anybody call me up to complain about a page design. I’ve had voicemails now that start out with, “I haven’t read your column yet, but … you’re an idiot!”

Q. How do you handle that?

A. Actually, my wife has been great training. Not that she calls me an idiot all the time, but she’s been getting those kind of calls for years and always shares them with me. I always said, “What do you even care? It’s just some guy in his underpants in his mom’s basement screaming at you at 5 in the morning? It doesn’t matter.” It’s really different when it’s you, but I’ve got all those lectures in my head that I’ve given her over the years. So if I take it personally, I can’t lecture her anymore.

Q. What do you think you’ll miss most about being a designer?

A. Every time big news happens, I get a little twinge. Normally I would be there trying to make sense of it and figuring out what to say on the front page. Now I’m kind of watching other people do it. It’s more fun to read the paper though, because I haven’t read everything already.

Q. What do you think you’ll miss least about being a designer?

A. (Pauses) You know, I loved being a designer. I just came to a point where I wasn’t learning as much anymore. And for me, I have to be growing all the time or I get really bored.

Q. If you had to pick one thing you expect to enjoy most about being a pop music critic, what would that be?

A. Going to concerts three or four nights a week. And getting paid for it. I mean, you really can’t get a better job than that.

Q. Let’s flash-forward to a year from now, how will you know if this move has been a success? What will that look like?

A. Hmmm. If I’m still employed, that would be good. I’ll take that as the baseline for success in 2013. You know, a good well-rounded writing portfolio. If I’ve got a handful of columns, ahandful of features and a handful of reviews that I can stand behind and say, “Alright, I can do this.” If I don’t look back on it and cringe. When you step out of your comfort zone, there’s always that fear of failure, that feeling of, “What if I really can’t do this now that I’ve told everybody that I can.” You’re always your own harshest critic, so if I can look back in December 2013 and have a handful of things that I don’t cringe at, I will feel good.

Q. What advice would you have for designers elsewhere who might be interested in transitioning to other roles?

A. Look for opportunities at your paper. Develop great relationships with word-side editors based on talking about stories, based on concept. Don’t talk down to them about design, talk tothem about stories. If you establish yourself as a journalist in a newsroom, doors will open up. And if you’re in a newsroom where doors will not open up that way, maybe you’re not in the right newsroom. But I think the good newsrooms recognize a journalist no matter where they are.

(Paul Wallen is Senior Features Designer and Art Director of Bay Magazine at the Tampa Bay Times. See examples of his work here.)

On a side note, send us your NFL playoff pages to share in a similar fashion: sportsdesigner@gmail.com.

Tuscaloosa News Sports

Tuscaloosa News A1

Huntsville Times A1

Birmingham News A1

Fort Payne  Times-Journal

Anniston Star

Dothan Eagle

South Bend Tribune

Northwest Herald

Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune Preview

Miami Herald

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Sun-Sentinel Preview

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Scranton Times-Tribune

Detroit Free Press

Seriously. NFL pages are next. sportsdesigner@gmail.com. Don’t make me hunt. I’m a retired blogger. I’m lazy.

Graduation is the most bizarre feeling. The second my name was called and I walked across the stage, it all ended. All the stress, all the homework, all the tests, the quizzes – it was all over. I should have been ecstatic, but for the first time in the past several weeks I was sad. Ball State had been the most incredible school to me and now I was leaving – forever. This chapter of my life was finally coming to an end. But when one door closes, another one opens – for me, it’s 682 miles away in New York City.

Mom made the trip with me to New York, and helped get me settled in to my new apartment.

My whole family came for my graduation. It was a really special week and I am so thankful I got that last bit of time with everyone before I headed out. The Monday morning after graduation, my mom and I finished packing up the Grand Caravan we rented and set out for NYC. How we fit my entire life into a mini van I will never, ever understand. Believe me – I have a lot of stuff. We passed through Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. My mom and I love little road trips, so we had a blast driving. I did a little shopping on the way as well and bought myself the Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines that several people have suggested to me. I can’t wait to start reading it and get started with more freelancing. Somehow we got to my apartment and unpacked the van (with multiple trips to the 16th floor) just in time to have a delicious Chinese takeout dinner on the floor with the Empire State building right outside my window. It literally couldn’t have been more perfect. My mom and I got to spend four days shopping and decorating my adorable one bedroom apartment and it could not have been more perfect. She had never been to New York before and we had so much fun. I am so happy we got to have that time together.

Starting my first job, I am absolutely thrilled to be at the very bottom of the food chain again. This past year I spent teaching freshman and sophomores everything I had learned the past three and a half years, and though I enjoyed it, I am so excited to be in a position where all I get to do is learn. Although I must say, I was extremely lucky to have the most incredible professors at Ball State. I can truly say Jennifer
George-Palilonis and Ryan Sparrow changed my life. They taught me more than I could ever dreamed of learning and pushed me every day to become better. They never, ever let me settle. Sometimes…well most of the time, it was frustrating. But looking back it was the best gift they could have given me. They taught me that my work can always be improved and to never be satisfied with my first idea. I left Ball State feeling prepared and equipped with all the right tools to delve into my first job.

The new office!

I’m sure you all know the feeling of uncertainty on the first day of a new (or first) job. As I walked into my job for the first time, I honestly basically felt like I was going to faint. I really couldn’t believe this was part of my new life. Everyone was so welcoming and wonderful, I started to feel at home right away. Of course I still have those little nerves everyday and think I will for a while. I remember at the SND
conference in Cleveland this last fall, Mario Garcia said something that really stuck with me. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said, “We always have to have those butterflies in our stomach, because as soon as they’re gone we’ve lost it.”

As for being in New York – I love it. I love everything about being in the city. The crowds, the stuffy subways – absolutely everything. I really can’t imagine this place getting old. I’m sure I will take back that statement someday, but New York and I are definitely still in the honeymoon stage – and will be for a while. I’ve already started on my first assignments and I can’t wait to finish my first full week! 2013 is starting off to be a very, very good year.

—Chelsea

(Chelsea Kardokus is a freelance designer for TIME magazine in New York City. See more of her work here.)

SND’s board is made up of more than 20 volunteers who focus on different parts of making SND go, whether a geographic area or an area of expertise, like the website or training.

If you’d like to get involved in SND, please reach out to your region director, an officer or Executive Director, Stephen Komives. There is always a work to do in our community of news design. You can host a training event, contribute to SND’s publications or take part in our workshops or competitions. There are many possibilities.

Meanwhile, here are the new board members:

SND Foundation director: Neal Pattison

Neal Pattison is executive editor at The Daily Herald in Everett, Wash. He has been a senior editor at papers in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest for 30 years. These included The Spokesman-Review, which was honored by NPPA for Best Use of Photos; and The Albuquerque Tribune, which won a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Both papers were listed by SND among the world’s best-designed newspapers. Neal attended the American Press Institute’s inaugural seminar on newspaper design in 1978, at which SND was conceived. He is a journalism graduate of Ohio University.

Interested in helping with the Foundation, contact Neal here

SNDF education director: Darren Sanefski

Darren Sanefski is currently an Assistant Professor of Multiple Platform Journalism at The Meek School of Journalism and New Media at The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). He has an extensive news design and marketing background. He received his master of arts (interactive design) from the State University of New York at Oswego and a bachelor of fine arts (visual communication) from Syracuse University. He was on the faculty at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University from 2005 until 2012. Sanefski worked for The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse, NY. Most recently, he was the paper’s sports design editor and designed interactive sports graphics for its sister website, Syracuse.com.

Interested in SNDS travel grants, internships or scholarships, contact Darren here

Education and training director: Jeff Goertzen

Jeff Goertzen is currently senior graphic artist and consultant at The Orange County Register. and was previously at USA TODAY and The Denver Post where he directed staffs to produce informational graphics and illustrations for all platforms in both digital and print.

 In the past, Jeff has served on the SND board for 11 years, conducting dozens of workshops worldwide since 1990. He works as an independent graphics consultant with a portfolio of more than 100 newspapers in 40 countries, including El Mundo of Madrid, Spain; El Periodical de Catalunya in Barcelona; USAToday; LeMonde; Clarin; El Comercio; New Straits Times; and O Globo. His projects have won dozens of awards, including Golds, from Society for News Design and Malofiej. He also has worked on redesign projects with internationally renowned design gurus, Mario Garcia and Roger Black. Jeff has been part of the visiting faculty for the Poynter Institute of Media Studies since 1989.



Interested in hosting or attending a graphics garage training event, contact Jeff here

Region 2 director: Frank Mina

Region 2 includes includes Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri

Frank Mina is deputy managing editor, presentation at the San Francisco Chronicle. A visual journalist for more than 15 years, Mina’s work and staff have been honored by SND and other organizations for design and photography

Interested in getting involved in Region 2, contact Frank here

Region 4 director: Joe Greco

Region 4 includes: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Kentucky

Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media. Since coming to GateHouse in early 2007, Joe has redesigned more than 250 newspapers and magazines. For GateHouse News Service, he has developed scores of editorial and niche products used by GateHouse publications and other clients. He was instrumental in his company’s transition to centralized design facilities, where he guided the system build and workflow for more than 150 designers in three locations. Outside the office, Joe spends his time helping his wife Quyen (quinn) raise their three boys — Dylan, Matthew and Carson — and trying not to step on a stray Lego.

Interested in getting involved in Region 4, contact Joe here

Officer positions

New officers also take over for the Society, here they are:
President: Rob Schneider, of the Dallas Morning News
Vice president: David Kordalski, of The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Secretary-treasurer: Lee Steele, of Hearst Connecticut Newspapers

Read more about the officers on SND’s profile page.

Outgoing board members

Behind these new appointments are those that are coming to an end. This year’s group is an outstanding group of SND contributors who hopefully will stay involved in many ways. The outgoing immediate past-president Steve Dorsey has been on the SND board since dinosaurs roamed the earth. He’s been editor of the magazine, Design Journal, publications director, SND Foundation director and of course an officer. Denise Reagan, outgoing SND Foundation director has had a similar string of appointments including editing SND’s newsletter, running quick courses and more. Jennifer George-Palilonis has done an incredible job director the Foundation’s internships, travel grants and more. Shraddha Swaroop, in Region 2, and Michael Tribble, in Region 4 were two of SND’s best.

SND would like to thank those leaving posts and welcome those coming in. It’s easy to get involved in SND.

SND has recognized the top work for the last 34 years. For the last three, we’ve evolved our Best of Digital News Design to reflect cutting edge digital work from Washington DC to Moscow, Madrid, Spain, to Mexico City. You’ll find an array of new categories this year designed to make it easier to submit your work, whether a newsapp, site redesign, interactive experience or mobile app.

Here is what you’ll need to know:

Print entry deadlines: U.S. submissions, Jan. 16, 2013; international submissions, Jan. 23, 2013.

Digital entry deadlines: Jan. 23, 2013

Digital competition categories: More on the changes to this year’s competition, categories and rules

Digital entry form: Register first and then click on “submit entries.”

What sites are the World’s Best Designed? We’re looking for your ideas for the World’s Best Designed websites and mobile apps. A group of judges will go over all submissions and ideas in February, but first we’d like to hear from you. Send us your ideas.

Print competition Call for Entries: Instructions, categories and forms English and Spanish

The Call is posted here.

It’s available now in English and Spanish; other languages will be available in the coming weeks.

The deadlines for U.S. entries is Jan. 16, 2013; for international entries it’s Jan. 23, 2013. Good luck!

Over the last few years I have been asked on a regular basis to design my friends’ resumés. Of course I always say yes because it is something fun for me to do other than classwork, and a way to show some creativity. Slowly but surely, more people started asking and I started to wonder if I could get more out of it than dinner or drinks.

After spring semester was over I decided to take a leap and open an Etsy store. I didn’t think much would come of it — maybe making a few bucks here or there — but I was pretty wrong. I had my first purchase within 24 hours of opening my store, and the steady stream hasn’t stopped since. I started with only a few resumé templates and then slowly added business cards, letterhead and a design pack that includes all three pieces.

In short, I was having a blast doing this. I’ve had several clients come back to me with more work completely unrelated to their resumé or business cards and today, a lot of my business isn’t even through Etsy. People find me there and then contact me outside of my shop for special projects. I am really excited about this incredible opportunity and have decided after I graduate (and actually have some free time) I want to pursue this business even more. I want to start delving into other areas such as weddings, greeting cards, etc. I am going to expand with a website solely for this business and add more products. But, I am very uncertain about several steps along the way and would love any advice helping me answer these questions.

1. I am really bad at pricing. I don’t know how to transition from my college-student price structure to something that reflects I am now a young professional. I’m scared that if I go too high I won’t get any business, but if I go too low people I will be demining my time and talent.

2. How do I expand my cliental? Sure, Etsy is a great start, but what are other ways to get myself out there and be noticed? What are the best ways to get “in” to the freelancing world?

3. What other types of work should I get into? Like I mentioned, I would love to do weddings, but how else could I market myself to a larger audience and what other kinds of services could I offer?

I know a lot of you have been in the same boat and any ideas or advice would be wonderful!

— Chelsea

(Chelsea Kardokus is a senior journalism graphics major at Ball State University. See more of her work here.)

I knew apartment hunting in NYC was going to be hard, but I didn’t realize exactly how hard.

My boyfriend Alberto and I got to NYC Saturday morning and we were definitely not prepared for what the next 48 hours would be like. Naïvely I thought I might see one or two apartments and then automatically have some ding go off in my head saying, “This is it, we have a winner!” But by Sunday at 3:00 p.m. I was sitting in a Starbucks crying because I was apartmentless and now hopeless. This was my one shot to find something and I blew it. We had one last appointment at 4:30 p.m. before our MegaBus left, but I had absolutely no hope in it being the one. Luckily, Alberto was there to encourage me and remind me everything was going to be okay, but I could tell he was a little nervous.

The second we walked into the last appointment, my nerves were instantly relieved. The ding I had been praying for went off and this was it. I officially had found my first New York City apartment. This was a moment I had been dreaming of since the first time I saw ”Sleepless in Seattle” and said as an eight-year-old that one day I was going to live in NYC. (My parent’s probably didn’t take this seriously because at the time I also thought I was going to be on Broadway, but here I am today signing a lease.)

But before I start day dreaming too much about my adorable one bedroom on 135th and Broadway, there are a few last big projects I’m finishing up at Ball State.

Since I’m graduating from the Honors College, I have to write a senior thesis. Writing a 25+ page paper sounded like the last thing I wanted to do during my last semester at college, so I opted to do a “creative project” instead. It ended up being one of the most rewarding projects I have done at Ball State. My project was to create a tablet version of Ball Bearings, our student-run magazine (that I am also design editor of). At first I thought it was going to be pretty simple, just a little reformatting here and there and adding in some slideshows and videos. But, I was extremely wrong and ended up learning more than I ever could have imagined from this project. After hours upon hours and hours and hours of work throughout the past two months, I can finally say the magazine will be downloadable within the next few weeks! I am beyond thrilled.

This really opened my eyes to a whole new world of design. Rethinking every single part of a story and how the content could best be presented to the viewer as well as the best possible usability, made me fall in love with this process. I am so thankful that I got the opportunity to start learning this while I am still in school. I really hope I will be able to delve more and more into this world in my professional career.

I still can’t believe this is coming to an end so quickly. Finishing up this project was a huge milestone for this semester. Just a few more pointless projects, my exit interview, two weeks and four days Ieft and I’m out of here!

New York, I am ready.

—Chelsea

(Chelsea Kardokus is a senior journalism graphics major at Ball State University. See more of her work here.)