Design - The good, bad and ugly

I'll go you one better. A few summers ago, because of some change in printing configurations that meant we had to match up with the news section in our paper, we regularly averaged 14 or 16 pages in our Friday section.

It was a friggin' joke.

We had two open pages of NFL coverage very day. All wire (because, being in SoCal, we don't have a team.) We had two open pages of college football (although we do have, ahem, a professional team that plays at the Coliseum ;D), half local copy and half wire.

They finally heeded our desperate calls for less space, and put us back to a normal 8-page section during the week (although on slow days, sometimes that's more than enough.)

Hell, readers might have loved all those headlines and pictures and stories we gave them for $0.50. But I doubt they were fooled that we were actually giving them more than we were.

 

I guess this is more of a comment on the headline. Am I the only one who wouldn't let this headline by?

 

[blue] What's wrong with that headline? [/blue]

 

I get the feeling that, if you're in an area where one of your major teams is nicknamed the Beavers, such concerns would be met with a roll of the eyes and ignoring the question.

In other words, they're past the giggle-giggle that goes with the term "beaver."

P.S. There is no good reason to have a dogleg on a section front. ANY section front.

 

Oregon State is nowhere near Omaha, Shot. Someone was trying to be clever.

 

Actually, that assertion, in its entirety, is factually inaccurate. Nobody was trying to be clever in writing that headline.

In truth, it was the only night of the three so far in which we had a desk-wide headline crisis. ... 9 p.m. turned into midnight and we had no good headline. Someone said, "Just go with Beavers by a hair. It doesn't have the pop that we're after but it describes the game."

Oregon State's been in the CWS three years in a row, and they're the defending champion. So I guess their name is no longer as funny as it should be to us. In 2005, yeah someone probably would have been guilty of an attempt at wittiness. This one was just a headline that has another connotation and nobody thought with a dirty enough mind to catch it, myself included.

On the other hand, as I asked our SE yesterday, is there any headline that uses the word "Beavers" that CAN'T be made dirty? I'm pretty sure that "BEAVERS WIN" can even be chortled at. And if so, do we avoid referring to the OSU mascot altogether in display type, or do we take the OSU-centric high road that Shot was referring to?

Personally, I'm pushing for the latter.

I'm also disappointed that South Carolina lost the Super Regional. And I'm hoping OSU plays UC Irvine, since Irvine's mascot is the Anteaters but UCI likes to short that nickname to Eaters.

 

Thanks, Josh, for clearing that up. The work you guys have done on the CWS has been exemplary, but come on, you're telling me there weren't myriad headlines you could have used that were just as descriptive without seeming to a distant onlooker like a double-entendre?

 

??? ??? ??? ??? ???

I don't see a dogleg. At least not one that offends me.

Now, had the material under the photo been something other than CWS . . . that's one thing.

But as long as it's all tournament related . . . no big deal.

Today I had a five-column U.S. Open photo with one leg of type than ran about one inch longer than the photo. Underneath the photo I had a couple of U.S. Open gadgets (top finishers, inside reefer, chart of four consecutive international winners of the event) that ran horizontally (5 columns x one inch) and squared off with that "dangling" one inch of type on the right.

Was that a dogleg, too?

 

Doc. On that one, you've got me. It could have been different, better and sans connotation.

And it probably should have.

I just don't want it cast as though we were being flippant. ... This series drains us like even football doesn't. ... We have to turn out 11 consecutive days of deadline special sections, with four deadlines a night, plus the preview. It has the same net effect as covering the Olympics -- if they're in a U.S. time zone -- every June. ... Producing it in Harris, especially this year with a staff in the process of replacing both me (design director) and Dave Elsesser (ASE), takes an incredible physical and mental toll, and I just can't think of anyone here who would have the time or foresight to intentionally make such a pun on deadline. If they did, they'd be in my office for a fatherly talking-to. ...

All that to say, yeah, I see the points about Beaver headlines and am totally willing to be wrong about my stance on them. ... I just think asserting anything resembling juvenile sabotage on our desk takes humanity and circumstance completely out of the equation.

 

Cool of you to log on, Josh. Thanks.

 

Are people incapable of reading a dogleg on the cover as opposed to the inside? If so, we have a serious problem as a people.

 

What's so bad about Harris? I've never used it.