What I learned working in journalism - as a designer

I come from a background that blends traditional arts and design. My main focus has always been in the multimedia and the digital world, but i have always been in love with objects we use in everyday life, as each of them carries a story. Stories are everywhere, and if you don't create your own, you will adopt the stories of others. This one, however, is one I've been living with for a while as a multimedia designer, landing a full time job in journalism, and is both deeply personal and a systemic analysis of overlaps between the two worlds in the crerative industry. 

Systems are everything

Everyone knows, what high quality output is supposed to look like. Everyone can criticise. But, it is in knowing how things are done, that empowerment stems from. It is in understanding, how something is made, what are the building blocks, and how they come together. Then, there are processes and pipelines. There's the how, not the what. And the how is empowering. This is an analogy i see in the worlds of design, journalism, but also business.

In journalism, an article has a flow, has a form, there is a kind of an invisible tamplate or format a media house is using in reporting for each type of an article – maybe just a short notice, or an event coverage, or an insight into a local problematic. Each has a defined length, format, but also language you can and can not use under the ever watching eyes of the editors.

In design, we see systems everywhere, and they are there to make our life easier. In graphic design, there are grids, corporate image guides, and templates. User interfaces are even more system–based: – we need fonts, colors, spacings, ratios, tone of voice. Branding is a system. And if we get into three dimensions, all architecture is based on systems, and best interior design has an innate logic to it, making it – a system.

A voice is a system

Branding is a system. Your voice has to be consistent across ll media. Every font has a tone to it, which is why typefaces are important. The image you use, the colors, the mood, the tone of your voiceovers. These are the visible, face value elements. Bus as we dive deeper, we discover how its’s made – we discover pipelines, templates, and planning.

A voice must not be shattered. It has to be uniform and consistent, which is why influencers and media always stick to the same format – especially in the short videos or reels. The audience thus knows what to expect – from a single voice in the digital ethers.

Mastering the language

Design, as well as writhng has its own language. Writing for daily editorial is something completely diferent from research writing or writing poetry. You have to create a story from raw data, and keep the reader’s attention thrughout the article. Give them a candy, as my mentors say in the office.

Similar to design, I had to learn one thing i always had a problem with – leaving out the right information, and presenting only those, that are relevant.

Media is hiding information, they say, or media is blowing events out of proportion. But this is just the surface to those, who never saw in the belly of the engine. According to journalism codex, which my boss is very srtict about, we don’t do that. What we do, is create a story. Similar to social media. Take the juicy details, leave out the clutter, and, not unlike pruning a tree, you shape the text into one story, one current, one thing that has a head and a tail. Yes, information gets left out - because it is not relevant to the editors, whose job is to know what is relevant to the audience. In Design, you have to be your own curator. You need to know what is essential, what is left out, what is hidden or implied.

Hacking, thriving, claiming life

Supposed I was a professional athlete, competing in the discipline of boat rowing. Now, for some reason, I find myself in a professional running team. We compete daily, nd the team depends on my results to stay in the game. It goes without saying that i do my best, even when I don’t feel like it. Dopamine rushes, my brain is getting burnt out every single day. Minutes after finishing an interview with historic background I rush out of the office to make another. Take photos, ask questions on the go. Get the candy, think how the structure will look like. Think of the story. Make good photos, and god forbid your battery runs empty. Finish the article by three, so you can have the rest of the day off.

Well, now, I felt I need to keep rowing. Jut like an athlete with sore muscles, my brain is still in high gear, basal ganglia overclocked like an old motherboard, dopamine saliency out of the roof, yet, my creative muscle – is sore. I am tired. Deep focused work requires brain in another gear, and I am struggling to put my brain into it.

I shake off the freelancing mindset, for now. Take away the pressure from my creativity. Not everything has to be a product, not every illustrati6on or drawing has to be turned into print pattern.

I pick up my guitar, as I try to do every afternoon. Lyrics flow alongside with chords, training my fingers to dance with the maj-s. Melodies start taking shapes, and slowly, songs emerge. I got better at this. By strengtheing one muscle, my other muscles are becoming better.

A daily sprint, but marathon in the long run

So, I have a day off. It’s Wednesday, a national holiday, and I can finally direct my creative muscle towards my own projects. I start by playing guitar, next is’s some sketching. I got inspired by a robe I founnd in the thrift shop a day ago, a beautiful graphic spanning the entire length of the mini dress. There is a scenery with precise line drawings of a boat resting below a cliff, it has a kind of a Japanese woodcut feel.

I sit myself down and start some illustration. Scenery from the Wild, a riverbank drawn from a lived memory. As I’m filling in the rasters with my pen, I get myself thinking, that it’s so much like ediorial writing. It has to look good. There is an innate quality of the visual language, it needs to clearly communicate to the viewer: planes, depth, light and shadow, space mapping, direction. Another language, another system, different expression.

I finish my drawing as fast as I can, leaving it with maximal legibility – somehing that would, prehaps, have just a month ago remained a rough sketch, is now boastng a stylistic language code, coherently pulling it all together. Decluttered, clear, concise. And it is all thanks to journalism.

Deadlines, schedules, and acts of service

Working under daily pressureof deadlines did, in fact, make me more creative, but is’t s a step-by-step creating, cumulative, completng simpler tasks. No pressure, just joy. I haven’t been able to creae from joy for a while. There’s always been a shade of ’how will this one make me money’. Monthly salary takes off the burden of guesswork, the everpresent pressure to turn my creativity into a viable business model. My narrative shifted from performing to serving, from contraction to desire to serve.

In journalism, a service to others mindset is a must. Your stories are a glue, that connects communities. You take an event, or someone else’s word, or just a bunch of raw data, and put it into a story that can be told in a regular language, while still abiding by strict rules of grammar and journalist ethics. And being in the micro-region that I am, which is known for its tightly-knit community, writing for the people is the most important thing.

I really am happy, when I manage to create an article that reads well. And if I don’t, or god forbid, the photos are out of focus, there’s this all-pervasive feeling that I could have done better. It keeps haunting me, and I keep training, every single day.

Perhaps thisi is what journalism and social media have in common: the audience is craving a story. You can’t just throw raw data at the people, you need to make them into a coherent flow. Some data gets left out – or maybe thrown into statistics. And, you don’t have time to sift through everything. It has to look good, it has to read well, it has to speak to – well, everyone.

The articles that I’m most proud of have one thing in common: they are written with the intention of serving the people. And, well, the photos are ok.

There are moments when I have to pull rabbits out of hats, swing my magic wand an create a story out of ordinary, everyday life.

Every event is a story for a journalist.

Helena M. Kolka

digiscapes.cyou 

see you - in the Wild.