Pony Express New Look a Decade Plus in the Making
By Jason Goldman-Hall
By Jason Goldman-Hall
It (hopefully) goes without saying that I’m excited if you’re reading this, or even if you’re holding this paper in your hand, because, sadly, reading real, objective, balanced news coverage is not something a lot of Americans do anymore.
But this issue, that you probably noticed looks a little different from last year’s versions, is special, because it represents, in many ways, the next step in a more-than decade-long process.
About 12 years ago, while I was just the yearbook adviser, our then-new journalism adviser asked if I would help with a redesign of the newspaper and its standard template. I jumped at the chance, and created a quick rough draft version, cleaned up the font styles, standardized the columns and gutters, and ultimately tried to make a document that was easier for students to work with, and easier to place text and photos in.
Unfortunately, and for reasons that I no longer remember, we never got past that rough draft phase, and the version I threw together as a proof-of-concept template became the working template, and stayed that way up until about a month ago.
For anyone who has ever used an aging InDesign document, that old file was showing its age. Columns were connected in odd places, paragraph styles were wonkier than the Capital Beltway, and there were text wraps everywhere.
Everywhere.
So… many… text wraps.
Text wraps on text boxes, text wraps on graphics.
So we redesigned it. We shrunk the margins to fit more content on every page, changed spacing and orientation of some sections to look more appealing, and our amazing Photo Editor/Art Director/Human Trumpeteer Sharon Kim designed our cool new masthead and headers.
Our staff has talked about redesigning the paper for years, but for one reason or another, it never worked out, which makes this redesign that much better. Not only did this staff, and this editorial board, led by Editor-in-Chief Jocelyn Cosgrove in her nearly-unprecedented third year as a Pony Express editor, push for the redesign, but they justified it by coming up with better art ideas, and by motivating themselves and their staff to go out and take better photos.
If you don’t like the new look, blame me, put that all on me.
But if you do like it, recognize that it’s 100%, like the rest of this paper, from the hard work of your peers and colleagues that work on this staff. The better photography you see on these pages is because our new staff members have joined our returners out in the field to take more photos, to grow their skills and capture those moments.
Our new staff has already gone out to interview site administrators, teachers, even district personnel, all to bring these eight pages to your hands today.
The design will likely change in small ways as the year goes on, there are things the editors want to try, things that may work, things you may like, things you won’t. The goal is, ultimately, to modernize what has been a fairly old-fashioned newspaper into something more reflective of current trends in newspapers, something that will encourage more readers to engage with the incredible reporting and writing that these students do every month.
Thanks for reading this, thanks for reading our paper, thanks for being a part of this incredible Mustang community.
But this issue, that you probably noticed looks a little different from last year’s versions, is special, because it represents, in many ways, the next step in a more-than decade-long process.
About 12 years ago, while I was just the yearbook adviser, our then-new journalism adviser asked if I would help with a redesign of the newspaper and its standard template. I jumped at the chance, and created a quick rough draft version, cleaned up the font styles, standardized the columns and gutters, and ultimately tried to make a document that was easier for students to work with, and easier to place text and photos in.
Unfortunately, and for reasons that I no longer remember, we never got past that rough draft phase, and the version I threw together as a proof-of-concept template became the working template, and stayed that way up until about a month ago.
For anyone who has ever used an aging InDesign document, that old file was showing its age. Columns were connected in odd places, paragraph styles were wonkier than the Capital Beltway, and there were text wraps everywhere.
Everywhere.
So… many… text wraps.
Text wraps on text boxes, text wraps on graphics.
So we redesigned it. We shrunk the margins to fit more content on every page, changed spacing and orientation of some sections to look more appealing, and our amazing Photo Editor/Art Director/Human Trumpeteer Sharon Kim designed our cool new masthead and headers.
Our staff has talked about redesigning the paper for years, but for one reason or another, it never worked out, which makes this redesign that much better. Not only did this staff, and this editorial board, led by Editor-in-Chief Jocelyn Cosgrove in her nearly-unprecedented third year as a Pony Express editor, push for the redesign, but they justified it by coming up with better art ideas, and by motivating themselves and their staff to go out and take better photos.
If you don’t like the new look, blame me, put that all on me.
But if you do like it, recognize that it’s 100%, like the rest of this paper, from the hard work of your peers and colleagues that work on this staff. The better photography you see on these pages is because our new staff members have joined our returners out in the field to take more photos, to grow their skills and capture those moments.
Our new staff has already gone out to interview site administrators, teachers, even district personnel, all to bring these eight pages to your hands today.
The design will likely change in small ways as the year goes on, there are things the editors want to try, things that may work, things you may like, things you won’t. The goal is, ultimately, to modernize what has been a fairly old-fashioned newspaper into something more reflective of current trends in newspapers, something that will encourage more readers to engage with the incredible reporting and writing that these students do every month.
Thanks for reading this, thanks for reading our paper, thanks for being a part of this incredible Mustang community.