Mario with Fevzi Yazıcı on the Columbia campus; in my home in New York City’s Upper East Side where my +1T Newspaper Design Days trophy sits on bookshelf
While the cold and snowy weather did not cooperate last week for my part in the filming of a documentary that celebrates newspaper design and the +1T Newspaper Design Days event, I did enjoy meeting with Fevzi Yazıcı, Zaman art director, and two of his team members as we shot footage while conducting an interview that started in my home in the Upper East Side of New York City and proceeded to the campus of Columbia University where I was teaching my Thursday class.
In between, we were shaking snow flakes from our coats and shoes and doing the best we could as we shuffled our feet through the icy streets and sidewalks of a City that has seen enough of a winter that refuses to go.
+1T Newspaper Design Days
+1T Newspaper Design Days is one of the most comprehensive and well attended design conferences anywhere int he world. It is a celebration of visual journalism, with emphasis on printed newspapers and their look, although with more emphasis lately shifting to all things digital.
I have participated as a speaker in +1T Newspaper Design Days twice and prepare to do it again in June. Fevzi has decided to return to several of the speakers during the decade of the program and interview them for a documentary that will air at the time of this year’s conference, June 9-16 in Istanbul. It is his way of celebrating the event while grilling us with questions about what’s new and trending. From Fevzi:
“We want to make +1T Newspaper Design Days one of the best Journalism and design event in the world to shape our profession. To reach that goal our intention is to call entrepreneurs and decision makers to contribute future of journalism in the conference. Our enthusiasm will take us to the next level which is being a school in the future.”
The interview
A highlight of the interview was our exchange about a definition of “newspaper design”. It is the title of the event and Fevzi is not likely to change it anytime soon. However, he agreed with me that when we discuss newspaper design for purposes of this conference, we are not just talking about print.
“Newspaper design” is, indeed, the practice of creating a look & feel, appropriate story structures, grids and color palettes for all the platforms through which a newspaper presents information.
I like that definition and even discussed it with my Columbia students during Thursday’s class. When Fevzi asked me the biggest changes I have seen in the industry since I last spoke at the +1T Newspaper Design Days event four years ago, I did not have to hesitate: we are now more totally involved in designing for mobile platforms, and, in some cases, what happens here is what eventually ends up on the pages of the printed newspaper.
Congrats to the +1T Newspaper Design Days organizers as they prepare for a 10th anniversary and for continuing to explore “newspaper design”, now in its new definition.
More about +1T Newspaper Design Days
https://www.garciamedia.com/blog/in_turkey_newspaper_design_moves_away_from_chaos
http://www.snd.org/2014/06/great-work-1-zaman/