Tear me apart: criticizing Excalibur's design

“This Pippin Lee is a fantastic photographer,” Amelia repeated. “I keep telling my students their photos need clear backgrounds, and they don’t get it. He does–he’s got an amazing sense of perspective.”
She flipped the page. Another Pippin Lee photo, another thumbs up for our design. “It’s really clean, but it’s not boring.”
Amelia — a newspaper designer and photographer who’d worked with the New York Times, among others — was one of the professionals critiquing the Excalibur at the Associated Collegiate Press convention in Los Angeles. The conference, March 4 through 6, featured dozens of seminars, but Production Manager Kate Hudson and I were taking a timeout to have our paper looked at critically.
Amelia, with her eye largely on photographs and design details, had hardly anything critical to say about our Jan. 26 Rob Ford issue. She was torn on our use of breasts on the front page of our Feb. 9 Love & Sex supplement issue (a last-minute 3-in-the-morning decision I regretted the next day) but figured it’s worth it if it moves newspapers. At the end of the half-hour review, though, she basically handed us a clean bill of health, er, design.
It was nice to hear we were doing things right, but I was still hungry for a second opinion, from someone a little less forgiving. On our way out, we bumped into Dave. “Ah, the Excalibur, eh? I remember critiquing you guys last year in Phoenix. Looks good.” Thanks, I replied; I was suddenly inspired. I headed back to the conference organizers and booked a second critique with Dave the next day–greedy, I know, but I wanted to know what he thought of the redesign since last year.
An evening touring Hollywood Blvd. and a morningful of workshops later, we were back in the Hancock room, sitting down with Dave. His focus lay on content, and so, carefully browsing each page, he picked out our headlines, decks and ledes (the articles’ opening lines). “Mmm,” he mulled over our Feb. 16 Egyptian revolution issue. “Very straightforward. My students are always writing ledes that don’t get to the point, but you guys’ve got it.” Dave, no! I pleaded in my head. Isn’t there anything wrong with us? “Heh heh,” he started chuckling. He was reading our ‘Adventuresome’ comic. “Do you guys buy this off a service?” No, it’s student-drawn, I assured him. “That’s really funny.”
“I really hope my students’ newspaper can compete with you guys for Best of Show,” he chuckled. Which paper? I queried. “Oh, I’m with the Orion.” Kate and I were stunned slightly–the Orion, from California State, had picked up Best in Show the last four years in a row. They were a massive paper, with a super-professional design that looked even better this year. Gee, I don’t think you have to worry, I told him. At session’s end, he gave us another thumbs up–and from the Orion no less!
But I just wasn’t satisfied. I’m fond of our newspaper’s design, but there’s always room for improvement. I decided to take one last shot.
“Kate, what about Stano? You think we could ask him for a quick critique?” Kate said it was worth a go. Randy Stano, with the University of Miami, had been delivering most of the design seminars that weekend; he was an international newspaper design consultant with over 20 years in the industry. Sitting in on his session on typography the day before, even a design novice like me could tell he really knew his stuff.
He was delivering his final design session that same afternoon, on trends in major newspapers. I snuck in at the end, after my workshop on landing internships had ended, to hear him wax rhapsodic about the i, a Spanish daily newspaper that just won World’s Best Design from the Society of News Design. Kate was enamored with the i‘s design, and smiled at the layouts projected on the screen. Growing restless and ready to flee to the ballroom to catch a conference with Robert Redford, students began leaving just as Stano was wrapping up.
“Hi,” Kate approached him as other students filed by. “That was an excellent seminar, but I was wondering if you thought poster-style covers is really the way to go for smaller-size papers like i?” Kate was in her element, talking shop with a real industry professional. They chatted briefly, and we busted out a copy of our Rob Ford paper, and the question: quick critique, would you? “Sure,” he said. We sat down with Stano who, before he’d even folded open the paper, began scanning the top half of our cover. “You want to have less space between your headlines and decks,” he mumbled. Yes! Criticism! He opened it up, and continued his analysis. “You need an element to draw people to the captions, some bolding or something.” He offered tip after tip, letting us know what worked and what didn’t. It was so satisfying to finally hear that we could, indeed, improve, if only in the details of our design. Even Stano, though, was pretty impressed. (“There’s another contest in Washington soon you should enter,” he told us.)
But there was one thing that really stuck out. “Your nameplate looks like it’s from the ’80s,” he remarked matter-of-factly, commenting on the ‘Excalibur’ logo emblazoned across the top of the page. This little relic is something Kate had been whining over since she started with Excalibur, and Stano was apparently in agreement–our logo sucked.
Overall, though, it was another pat on the back. We left, confident we had a Best in Show-stopper that’d net us at least fifth place, like our predecessors had last year, or maybe third or second like we’d won the past few years.
Disappointment loomed large when, after our four-hour flight back to Toronto, I booted up the office computer and looked up the convention winners. Our name was nowhere on the top-10 list.
At the top, of course, was the Orion, the best college paper in North America. Ugh.