Archived Posts by Matt Mansfield

Start-up lessons: A homicide site in DC

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Screen Shot 2012-01-24 at 10.52.25 AM

What can you learn about design and development from a site about homicides? A lot, it turns out as we see in this dispatch in SND’s Year-Long Conversation about design.

  • Do what you can—now.
  • Use what you can—now.
  • Build what you can—now.
  • Take risks.
  • Evaluate.
  • Be public.
  • Think creatively.
  • Trust that things will fall into place.
  • But do what you can to make them fall into the right places.
  • Never stop looking forward.
  • Find your purpose, define it, and live by it.
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      An expansive definition of design

      Sunday, January 1st, 2012

      What do we mean when we talk about design? Seems like a good question as we start a new year. Journalist friends answer in different ways, yet their responses always appear — in my mind’s eye, at least — too tied to their lives at whatever media organization they work for, the print or online

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      Videos from mobile lectures: SND STL now on demand

      Monday, December 12th, 2011

      SND STL Videos

      Couldn’t make it to St. Louis for the 2011 edition of the annual workshop? Double-scheduled? Don’t worry: from mobile to visual inspiration, ESPN and news apps, we have video to catch you up to speed, with a special emphasis on the very full sessions on mobile/tablet and Web design.

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      Holiday sale! Save $100 on your SND Cleveland registration

      Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

      Black Friday

      SND’s 2nd Annual holiday sale runs through the end of the year- save $100 on your SND Cleveland registration.

      Inspiration and interactivity will be the themes when SND comes to Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 11-13 for our annual workshop. This is your chance to get the costs on the 2011 budget and guarantee your spot at sndcle. Register here.

      $250 for professional members and $200 for faculty and students for a limited time. Stay tuned to here for details.

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      Design lessons from 9/11

      Friday, September 9th, 2011

      People covered in dust walk over debris near the World Trade Center in New York City, on September 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Gulnara Samoilova)

      What did you learn?

      There was stunning photojournalism from the attacks. There were astounding information graphics. There was indelible design. As a visual journalist, what did you learn from 9/11? Share your story.

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      Roger Black on Ready-Media, templates and the future of design

      Friday, July 23rd, 2010

      Roger Black's Ready-Media site

      When Roger Black and Eduardo Danilo launched Ready-Media this week—the template service for newspapers, magazines and, eventually, the Web—the announcement sent distress signals through the design community. SND talks with Black about what he had in mind when creating Ready-Media.

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      Inside the design process for NPR’s iPad app

      Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

      app-paper-prototype

      The NPR app, which has been in the top free downloads since the iPad came out, and a companion site optimized for the iPad feature clean design and a careful attention to usability details. Hear more about the prototyping process with NPR’s Paulo Lopez and David Wright Jr.

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      Two words about the new Apple tablet: Think different

      Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

      The new Apple iPad

      Steve Jobs will unveil something big on Wednesday morning. Early word — and there’s been much of it — is that Apple will reinvent the idea of portable computing with a new tablet that just might revolutionize publishing.

      But if you’re worried about the tech specs and the price and the size of the thing and who will win the coveted phone contract (if there is one) and how the wireless will work and the millions of other rumors out there, you’re missing the point.

      Apple thinks bigger.
      It traffics in ideas.

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      Five questions: Amanda Zamora, multimedia editor

      Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

      Amanda Zamora

      Amanda Zamora left The Washington Post last year to be part of the start-up team that would launch The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. The independent nonprofit journalism venture, funded by various donors (including, of course, The Huffington Post, but also the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Knight Foundation) and based in Washington, D.C., is part of

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      Screen gems: Roger Fidler talks about e-readers and tablets

      Thursday, January 14th, 2010

      Roger Fidler and his prototype e-readers

      Fifteen years ago, Roger Fidler had a somewhat-prophetic vision for a thin electronic tablet. Now, as the publishing world scrambles to embrace e-readers and looks ahead to new devices and interaction models, we checked in with Fidler to reflect on missed opportunities and his predictions for what comes next.

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      Video: About that list of 25 moments…

      Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

      25icon

      Explore the videos from 25 Influential Moments in News Design, the oral history of the Society at 25 as told by the founding generation of information design professionals — with thoughtful insights on what shaped the craft.

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      Mobile: Paying for functionality in news apps

      Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

      The RevenueTwoPointZero event happened on Saturday in Washington. This is the report from the mobile team. Our solutions for monetizing the iPhone are based on existing technology but an emerging audience. The current audience may be small, but it’s clearly growing. Mobile remains new, so it offers opportunities to pursue revenue strategies that may not

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      An effort to find new revenue models launches

      Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

      Next weekend, the Society will be part of a day-long event in Washington aimed at helping the struggling newspaper industry find revenue solutions in a few key areas. The belief is that design thinking can help frame the issue because those of us used to conceptualizing can make a fast round of prototypes that will

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      General competition: Here’s the final tally

      Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

      The final day of The Best of Newspaper Design™ general competition has come to a close. The judges did not award a Best of Show. Four gold medals were awarded: two to the National Post, and one each to The New York Times Magazine and Expresso (Lisbon). The unofficial* top 10 winners by number of awards are the Los Angeles Times, the National Post (Toronto), The New York Times and its magazines, The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, La Presse (Montreal), The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the Boston Globe, Zaman (Istanbul), The National (Abu Dhabi), and three newspapers tied for No. 10: The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, the Chicago Tribune, and Clarin (Buenos Aires).

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      Meet the students

      Monday, February 9th, 2009

      We talked to the students from Michigan State and Syracuse who are assisting with this year’s judging. Find out what they are interested in and their ambitions for the future — and how they see the Society helping them.

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      Day 2: Your Top 10 winners heading into the final day

      Sunday, February 8th, 2009

      The sun is setting, the clouds moving in and temperatures dropping outside of Drumlins. The Best of Newspaper Design™ judging is also winding down. The judges continue to make good progress today with more than 9,000 entries judged at this point. The top winners (by number of awards) so far in the competition, in no

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