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Charles Apple: The Visual Side of Journalism

 

‘U-T San Diego’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

May 14: Two cool Sunday sports fronts from San Diego

This page caught my eye Sunday in the Facebook timeline of U-T San Diego. Click for a much larger view: Design director Peter Nguyen tells us: The concept actually came from Anthony Tarantino (former sports designer, current A1 designer) during one of our group brainstorms. Brainstorming is an important part of our process, because I feel the best ideas come [...]

March 14: A look at today’s Pope front pages (3)

[Freshly updated with a few more credits that rolled in throughout the day Thursday...] As you know, we have a new Pope. He’s from Argentina and is the first Pope ever from the Americas. As you might imagine, papers in Argentina went crazy with the story today. But you can spot right away why I’m reluctant to spend a lot [...]

Jan. 23: An inspired features illustration on a most difficult topic (2)

The charmingly clever illustration below ran Tuesday on the Health front of U-T San Diego. Design director Peter Nguyen tells us: Of course it’s really difficult to come up with a novel concept for a story that’s been done a million times over. So all the credit has to go to our staff illustrator, Cristina Martinez Byvik, for coming up [...]

Jan. 1: In the wake of the firing of yet another NFL coach: A full-page statistical breakdown

Here’s another epic sports project for you. The San Diego Chargers were one of the several NFL teams that fired their coach Monday. For today’s paper, UT-San Diego‘s Matt Perry created this full-page infographic look at the Chargers over the past decade. Click this for a much larger look. Matt tells us: We knew the odds of head coach Norv [...]

Oct. 15, 2012: How newspapers played a faster-than-sound fall from the sky

One of the big talkers for this past week was Felix Baumgartner, the man who skydived from the edge of space — 24 miles up. I wish I had seen this before, but my friends/clients at Grapihcs24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, produced a graphic explaining how the operation would work. Visual journalist Rudi Louw tells me: Yes, we ran this [...]

July 20, 2012: Today’s super-heroic Batman movie feature treatments (2)

Those of us who are fans of comic book movies should pause for a moment and think about the folks who were caught up in the horrible tragedy overnight in Denver. A gunman opened up during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie. At last count, 14 12 are dead and 50 are injured. Many of the victims were [...]

July 16, 2012: Behind that nice Colorado River graphic from U-T San Diego (1)

The redesigned Sunday pages I posted yesterday from U-T San Diego got quite a bit of nice reaction from the visual journalism community. In particular, folks loved the great full-page Colorado River graphic by Aaron Steckelberg that ran in the new SD In Depth section. I didn’t have a high-resolution copy to post yesterday, but now I do. Click for [...]

July 15, 2012: For U-T San Diego, it’s all about the visual spectacle

That’s one thing that broadsheet newspapers can do better than the internet, than iPads, than anything else: Sheer knock-the-reader-over-the-head visual oomph. And that’s what U-T San Diego is emphasizing in the revamp of its Sunday product. The marketing slogan for the revamp is “It’s a big deal.” And size is what the paper is pushing in both its campaign and [...]

July 13, 2012: Geekazoid Friday: We should all be in San Diego this weekend

In full swing right now in San Diego: The annual Comicon International, where my fellow geeks are gathering to discuss, watch previews and shop for memorabilia for their favorite science fiction, fantasy, action and comic-book movies, books and magazines. And, sure ’nuff, a number of folks dress up for Comicon. Today, U-T San Diego cartoonist Steve Breen focused on all [...]

June 29, 2012: The good, the bad and the most interesting health-care court ruling front pages (7)

One of the reasons I love the little 26,531-circulation Victoria (Texas) Advocate is because the paper does a pretty great job now. But it’s always looking to do better. Case in point: I heard this morning via Twitter from Chris Cobler, the editor of the Advocate. Chris writes: And my reply is: You did pretty well today, Chris. You recognized [...]

May 3, 2012: How U-T San Diego covered the death of former NFL great Junior Seau

News that stunned his family, friends and the entire sports world: Former NFL standout Junior Seau was found dead in his home yesterday, after apparently taking his own life. The news was especially a shock to residents of San Diego, where Seau spent most of his prime playing years. Here’s how U-T San Diego played the story on page one [...]

Feb. 20, 2012: A look at John Glenn 50th anniversary pages (1)

A number of papers out there have run packages over the past few days commemorating the flight of John Glenn, the first American in orbit. That happened 50 years ago today. Glenn wasn’t the first man in orbit, of course. That honor goes to Yuri Gagarin of what was then the Soviet Union. He flew one circuit around the Earth [...]

Jan. 27, 2012: Would you like to ride in my beautiful… blimp?

Yes — Yes, I would. Especially if the view is like this. Click for a much larger look: That is downtown San Diego on the left and Coronado on the right, separated by San Diego Bay. Way in the distance at the upper right is the Pacific Ocean. We’re looking south, so if we could peer through the haze, we [...]

Jan. 3, 2012: San Diego Union-Tribune makes changes to its nameplate, branding strategy (2)

The Union-Tribune of San Diego — under new ownership since mid-November — made a change to its branding strategy this morning. A note to readers today explains: We will now use one company name and logo on all of our media products and communications: U-T San Diego. This change marks a new era in our company’s history. It will help [...]

Jan. 2, 2012: Infographics day for two Southern California newspapers (1)

Two of Southern California’s largest newspapers featured infographics on page one today. Neither was particularly complex or even spectacular, perhaps, in scope or rendering style. But both were extremely effective in telling their respective stories. Which, of course, justifies their front-page play. — LOS ANGELES TIMES Los Angeles, Calif. Circulation: 572,998 The big story in L.A. this holiday season was [...]

Dec. 31, 2011: Today’s top ten ‘top ten news stories of 2011′ pages of 2011

Is it just me, or has news ever been as slow as it’s been this week? Unless you’re in Iowa, covering the last week of caucus campaigning. Or the New York Post, I mean. Many papers chose to fill the time — and their space — with the traditional look back on the biggest stories of the year. These stories [...]

Dec. 7, 2011: Today’s ten most interesting Pearl Harbor anniversary front pages

Many, many papers observed the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on their front pages today. Here’s a look at ten of the best. — VICTORIA ADVOCATE Victoria, Texas Circulation: 28,900 One of my favorite small-town papers — the Victoria Advocate — cleared everything off A1 today and ran a poster-like photoillustration of a local man who was [...]

Nov. 11, 2011: How you outfit an aircraft carrier for a basketball game (1)

So, how do you hold a huge college basketball game on the deck of an aircraft carrier? Well, you warn the players not to dive for a loose ball, I’d imagine. Seriously, though, the No. 1-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels will take on Michigan State this evening in San Diego, upon the deck of the USS Carl Vinson. Tipoff is [...]

Sept. 21, 2011: San Diego’s Yuri Victor to join Washington Post (2)

Yuri Victor — digital content and design manager for the San Diego Union Tribune — announced this morning via Facebook: Excited to announce I’m heading back to DC to work at The Washington Post. Yuri tells us: I’ll be designing news applications for washingtonpost.com. The position is a chance to move back into the newsroom in full and focus on [...]

Sept. 11, 2011: A look at today’s 9/11 anniversary newspaper visuals (8)

There’s a lot of amazing work out there today. So amazing, in fact, that I was a little swamped trying to process it all. My solution was to try something unusual. I posted the first half of my material so folks could begin digesting it. And then I added as the afternoon faded into evening. Not the way I’d prefer [...]

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