IFRA Conference in Paris Today
I will be doing updates from the Conference where I act as chairman in addition to presenting a session titled;
Storytelling in a multiplatform media world.
Also follow my updates of the conference on Twitter (twitter.com/tweetsbydesign)
Speakers include: Hans-Peter Janisch, a design consultant and international director of the Society of News Design; Steve Dorsey, deputy managing editor for presentation, Detroit Free Press; Etienne Mineur, co founder and art director, Incandescence, design studio; Frederik Ruys, founder and CEO, Vizualism, Netherlands; Geoff McGhee, multimedia editor, LeMonde.fr.
Hans-Peter Janisch: The change of newspaper design in Luxembourg
Janisch, who has worked as a design consultant with two dailies in Luxembourg—-Tageblatt and Le Quotidien—-tells us that the arrival of free newspapers in the tiny country, has prompted the traditional titles to take a look at what they do, and “become sexier”. Janisch has incorporated front pages that serve more as navigators, with less text. For Le Quotidien, he has proposed a large visual lead of the day, referring readers to read the story inside. For Tageblatt, a more classic concept, text accompanies stories on page one, but a more complete navigator has been introduced.
Etienne Mineur: The future of online publishing
Mineur, who is art director for Incandescence (France), believes that newspapers need to take a serious look at how they present information on their websites. They need to be more flexible with the layout and architecture of their sites. “Nobody wants to scroll down several screens to find information. Be more fluid. Move horizontally. Create blocks that lead to zooms, more direct access for information.” He recommends looking at video games for inspiration and excellent ideas that are readily applicable for news websites.
A conversation with Syracuse’s Tony Golden
We talk to Prof. Tony Golden, who heads the Graphics Design unit at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Tony, with whom I taught at Syracuse in the late 1970s when I was a member of the faculty, was a photography professor at that time. He tells me that at Newhouse, they have just completed a whole new curriculum that has gone through the curriculum committee and will be presented to the faculty in September.
From there it is off to the University and then the state, so this is what Tony describes as “work in progress” and not yet fully approved, but the ideas as there.
Mario: How is the Newhouse School preparing students to perform well in a multi-platform media world?
We have been teaching multimedia storytelling to our graphic design (we changed our name from graphic arts to graphic design this year) and photography majors for four years. We start this in our first photography class. The first 1/2 of the semester is digital photography principles and the second half is multimedia production with sound using Soundslide. We will be switching to Final Cut this fall so we can include video. With this foundation multimedia is part of the entire curriculum for our designers, photojournalists and illustration photographers.<
The school will be teaching multimedia storytelling to every incoming freshman, regardless of major, in a new course starting this fall. They will write, shoot, collect sound and edit to final production.
The V&IC department have two new hires in multimedia. Bruce Strong just finished his second year tenure track and is a multimedia storyteller, is Final Cut certified and a visual journalists from Ohio University. We brought him in to show us the way to the future- what technology to use, how to apply it, what new industry contacts to develop. He has been key in Newhouse faculty training in the department and school wide. Ken Harper just finished his first year tenure track. Ken is a web designer and motion graphics leader and is guiding the new direction of our graphic design program. Web design and motion graphics are key to our graphics future.
We have made concerted efforts to inherence collaborative work building teams of designers, photographers (multimedia storytellers) and “clients” from across the school. We are in the process of changing our name from Visual & Interactive Communications to Multimedia Photography & Graphic Design. This last bit may be privileged information for now.
Our faculty is training as fast as we can. I took a course in Final Cut in Maine last summer and am off to a course in sound production and mixing this summer.Mario: Which are your role models?
We are impressed with Chapel Hill and Miami. Oddly enough some schools just don’t appear to get it. I was at an Adobe workshop at Santa Fe last summer with twenty two educators from across the country and only two of us were talking about the need to step into the future world where the web will be the primary method of communications. Brian Storm (mediastorm.org) has been a friend of our program for years. They do it better than most an have a working business model to boot. He has our own Ed Kashi shooting for him and he hired another grad., BoB Sacha as one of his producers. Another one of ours, Pam Chen was with mediastorm and is now producing with Soros Foundation. Brian is on our Alexia advisory board. We look to these pros for the day to day advice on where all this is taking our communications
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Two Marios. Two Views.
Follow Mario Jr. and his blog about media analysis, web design and assorted topics related to the current state of our industry.
http://garciainteractive.com/
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https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/TheMarioBlog posting #271
