20/2/23: First time working on a live page – Londoner’s Diary
A critical incident or major learning event during my time at the Evening Standard was during week 7 on Monday, when I had the chance to work on a live newspaper page in the morning. The Evening Standard has a segment each day called Londoner’s Diary which features titbits and news from celebrity parties the previous night, as well as some short political news pieces. My line manager Ped (head of design at ES) explained to me the general layout of the page and what normally goes in each section. We had a call with the editor who told us what pictures he wanted for the page and I was guided by Ped in placing images into the page and arranging them in the best way, learning how to make the pictures work with the text.
The paper goes to print around 11am each day and before that the sub-editors need to go into the page and make any corrections, therefore we had to work quickly. It was quite challenging knowing that there was a time pressure, especially as it was my first time working on the page. I believe that from the instructions I was being given, however, I responded well and understood what needed to be done. The page features a lot of different images so at times it was quite fiddly and made it difficult to be precise when working. However, I made sure to pay attention to the small details such as aligning the pictures to edges, etc.
At one point, I was putting in pictures of some celebrities into a certain configuration. The result was a composition worked well, but I pointed out to Ped that there was some white space near the bottom, creating a strange gap of negative space. He approved the composition though, so I didn’t change it — I also had to finish designing the rest of the page, so I left it. Later when the page had been finished and signed off, Sarah (deputy art director of the paper) came over and pointed out this negative space and suggested to change the position of the celebrities so that there would be no gap. As the paper was due to be sent to print soon, Ped said she could just make the changes for the sake of speed. The result was indeed a composition which looked more cohesive.
From this event, I learnt that I should learn to trust my own judgement. I had thought that the white space looked strange but did not change it. However, it was also difficult to make such decisions myself as this was also my first time working on the page and I was unfamiliar with how things were done, so I relied on others’ instructions. This incident has reiterated to me that is important to listen to feedback, but equally important to know when to act on that feedback and when to ignore it.
Overall, it was a great learning experience and seeing my page printed in the paper that day was a great feeling. Because it was my first time working on that page I was inefficient and slow, but now that I have the experience I hope to try again and make more of my own judgements and decisions without guidance.