Emilia Sun
What would happen if The Daily Item’s entire design team got kidnapped? For starters, you’d be looking at, well . . . nothing.
I suspect that when you read The Item and are captivated by the stories, it may not occur to you just how much effort goes into the design.
I am not unbiased, since I am a designer, and I do have my fair share of opinions about how the page should look.
I majored in Visual Communication Design for 6 years and earned my master’s degree in 2020 from the Rochester Institute of Technology. I have worked at the paper for four years. In my first year at The Item, I couldn’t even spell “Swampscott” correctly; accidentally cut off the last paragraph of a guest commentary (almost got fired!); and endured the torture of being in charge of Page 1.
I can only imagine how little sleep my boss got, worrying about what kind of mistake he’d see in the next morning’s paper. At that point, all that effort becomes less relevant.
But that was then. Today, he is very proud of The Item’s design team. We communicate, cooperate, and collaborate seamlessly, and I’ve grown tremendously along the way.
And here’s a little secret: Words can only take you so far. What often draws readers to a page and keeps them there are artfully crafted layouts and skilled photography.
This takes a dedicated team to accomplish, especially when there is one daily and three weekly newspapers we have to design (not to mention the four quarterly magazines). If you turn to Page A5 and check the staff box, you’ll see we have nine reporters and five artists on the photography and design team.
Everyone in the office tries to contribute to the design of each issue, professionals and amateurs alike.
Despite our hard work, it can be easy for it to go unnoticed.
So let’s see what would happen if the company’s five design professionals were all kidnapped — hypothetically, of course.
First, without professional photographers, you’d likely see pages with large empty blocks.
Sure, your iPhone Pro Max lets you capture every moment for Instagram, but professional photography is a whole different game. Professionals craft images with storytelling and emotion, vibrant color and tone, unique perspective, and original creativity, transforming ordinary scenes into unforgettable visuals.
So, a big shout-out to our Creative Director, Spenser Hasak, a magician who somehow turns visual chaos into modern art.
Second, without designers, the paper would look and feel very different.
You can see my design on Page A1 today. Let me show you what my boss’s draft layout looked like:
See? Without me, it’s a mess.
To be fair, he’s a master of words and has a great eye for graphics, but he’s definitely not a technologist. No fault of his own — it is fun to watch. But without us, his sketches would be the final product, and trust me, you don’t want that. Neither does he.
If we weren’t here, you’d probably be staring at a handwritten version of The Item, full of misaligned paragraphs, smudged ink, and random doodles — basically a paper chaos waiting to happen, with headlines lost in the shuffle, stories blending together, and a complete lack of visual hierarchy.
Third, let’s talk about the advertisement section. Maybe you’ve already gotten used to the crisp black type printed on paper, which isn’t exactly easy to do, and that didn’t happen by accident.
Our Art Director, Sam Deeb, puts in 200% effort to make it look that good. Without his meticulous checks, especially ensuring that every ad from countless clients follows the correct CMYK (color) printing standards, what you’re reading could easily have ended up with double or even triple-edged letters.
Just imagining a newspaper without the design team might be scarier than anything you will see during Halloween.
So dear reader, the next time you enjoy an issue of The Item, I hope you’ll appreciate the design just as much as the stories. I hope you’ll still enjoy my boss’s sketches the way I do. And spare a thought for the design team. We’d prefer not to be kidnapped anytime soon.
Emilia Sun is Essex Media Group’s Senior Graphic Designer and can be reached at [email protected].
