Designing Business Pages in the Visual Age

By Curt Hazlett

Designing a business section used to be pretty simple. In truth, "designing" is much too grand a word. As recently as the 1980s, most sections were cobbled together by copy editors using only a few primitive tools -- type that was set a standard 12 picas wide, wire photos of wild-eyed stock traders, one-column bar charts, and a surfeit of headshots and two-point rules.

And that was a big improvement over what had come before. Check most business sections from the 1960s and 1970s and you'll find stunningly primitive typography and bizarre "wild art" pulled from the wires. I can still recall one photo in which a hot pants-clad model held two small gears up to her eyes like eyeglasses; the caption announced that the gears were made out of a new alloy made by U.S. Steel. I remember the photo because I ran it -- it was the only art I had that day.

Today's best business sections, in contrast, are complicated and colorful creations. Dramatic graphics tell complex stories visually and draw readers into the stories. Photographs eschew the obvious and hackneyed; illustrations lunge for the throat. White space is used without guilt and headlines are downright steroidal.

Storytelling in all its forms has hit our business pages, but its arrival hasn't come without trouble. Indeed, "The business section is by far the most difficult section to produce visually on a day in, day out basis," says Scott Goldman, senior editor/visuals at The Indianapolis Star and president of the Society for News Design. "Business design is totally what you make of it. If you just put in the standard photo assignment, that's all you're going to get."

Nicole Bogdas, the news projects designer at the Palm Beach Post, agrees. Good design is tough "because business doesn't lend itself to typical visuals," she says. "You can give anyone a copy of Tim Harrower's book The Newspaper Designer's Handbook, published by McGraw-Hill] and they can design a news page using a nice piece of staff-shot photography and a couple of stories. But staff-shot business photography is too often some guy sitting at a desk."

Overcoming that kind of mediocrity requires communication and patience, especially at papers that aren't big enough to have designers dedicated to business news -- which, of course, is most of them.

"I'll readily admit that I don't understand the stock market," says Bogdas, who is a regional director of Society for News Design. On those occasions when she's designed business pages, she has found it helpful if an editor is willing to explain a story's thrust in detail. But, she adds, "If I'm working with someone who is frustrated by my lack of understanding or who just wants you to put a page together so they can go home, then I'm not going to get that kind of communication. In that case I might go off with an idea and come back with something that the editor will say doesn't have anything to do with the story. And now I'm on deadline and can't fix it."

The solution is a commitment to collaboration -- an agreement among the members of the business staff to think early and often about the visual needs of the story and to talk freely about what should be done. Solid planning helps, too.

"Anticipate the visual elements of each story, and plan to make them happen," design consultant Ron Reason urges business journalists. "Make sure visual reporting takes place early in the process; make sure reporters bring back visual stuff. Ask yourself on every story, in the early planning stages: What is the SHOW ME aspect of this story? What would the reader rather be shown than told?"

At the Indianapolis Star, says Goldman, "We do what we call 'take five' sessions in which we get a graphic artist, a photographer, the reporter, an editor and a designer together and they talk about the story for five minutes. At that point we want to have at least the basic reporting done, and we can then ask, 'What do we do and how do we present it?' We talk about what they've got for numbers."

Beyond that, Goldman urges business journalists to read other sections avidly: "If you see one that's doing graphics right, grab it and look through it every day." He's also a big fan of websites focusing on news design. "There's one called bizdesigner.typepad.com that puts up a lot of pages and has a discussion forum, and there's also Newspagedesigner.com, which you can search by category," he says. Another for your bookmarks Newsdesigner.com.

"You want to look at what other people are doing as much as possible," Goldman advises. "If you stay in your own cubicle and just keep doing the same things over and over, you are not going to get any better. Never settle for the easiest approach. You never get anywhere that way."

Are business journalists following that advice? Absolutely, says Charles Apple, the graphics editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Hampton Roads, Va., who has won numerous design awards. "It's not just business reporters," he adds. "Everybody is getting better at doing this. When I was starting out 20 or 25 years ago, graphics were still new and were mostly decorative. A lot of reporters didn't like that, and there was a lot of resistance." Now the emphasis is on solid data that add to the package.

Apple says reporters these days are more willing to seek numbers early in the process, making it easier for graphic artists to envision the story. "The power of graphics is out there," he says. "People know they have to have good visuals if their stories are going to play well."

Apple points to the work of the Virginian-Pilot's lead business designer, Josh Bohling, an example of how good business design can get. "I refer to him as an evil genius," he says. "I don't know how his mind comes up with this stuff, but he's one of the more creative people in our newsroom."

In fact, the Virginian-Pilot -- already considered one of the best-designed papers in America -- unveiled a new design in May that one poster on newsdesigner.com called "the most drastic redesign of the year." It features new typography and features and a more open look.

The new look has been a boon for the business section, says business editor Bill Choyke. "We were probably the worst designed of all the sections," he says. "What Deb Withey [deputy managing editor for presentation] and her team did was to take a section that needed overhauling and do a wonderful job."

For business, the redesign started 18 months ago when a dozen people, including two from advertising and one from outside the building, began to talk about ways to reconfigure the section in ways that would help it appeal to CEOs, create a sense of place, offer value to business newcomers and engage the occasional business reader. Though there have been a few complaints that the redesign has too much white space and not enough news, Choyke believes it has actually increased his section's newsiness.

Choyke attributes a lot of the section's success to its designers, including Bohling. "It's cliché to say our designers are world class, but some of them are and the rest are very good. They can take some of the weakest stuff and make it good," he says.

He offers a few suggestions for business editors who'd like to power up their design.

First, he says, cultivate strong designers and let them do their jobs. "I don't micromanage," he says. "I list our lede story and let the talented people be talented." Just as important, he says, is a commitment to planning. "You have to be flexible, but once a week we sit down and plan out the lede pieces for the next two weeks," says Choyke. "That process is quite important. We know what's coming, and that really does help design."

Whatever approach is taken, being passive just doesn't work anymore, the Indianapolis Star' s Goldman argues.

"In this day and age, readers are so time stressed that you have to grab them," he says. "If you present a standard business page, they read right past it and hit your website for a headline or two. But if you can stop them as they're flipping through the paper with a great visual or a great headline or an engaging graphic, they are going to stop and read it. At the end of the day that's what we all want -- we want the stories to be read."

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism