Survey: Strong desire for digital design on #SNDDC program

  • November 30, 2014
Society for News Design

The survey results are in, with digital design and graphics leading the pack as the most-desired topics for SNDDC: The Future of News Design, the Society’s annual workshop. Thanks to everyone who participated.
A total of 140 people took the survey, which is providing important guidance for the program committee.
The annual gathering is set for April 9-11 in 2015 at the Newseum (that’s it in the picture leading this post). Registration opened on Friday for the event in Washington, D.C., and there’s also a new page dedicated to workshop happenings
Survey participants identified these six areas, ranked by votes, as most important for the Washington workshop program:

  • Digital design
  • Information graphics
  • Print design
  • Design education
  • Front-end development
  • Tablet design

Our team has already begun working on a draft of the program to highlight these topics. We expect to post a schedule in early January at the SNDDC page.
We’re also combing through the many excellent speakers suggestions — everyone from Jeff Bezos to Paula Scher to the NPR Visuals Team to Xaquín González Veira to at least 50 others — and seeing who we can convince to be a part of this awesome workshop. Stay tuned.
Support for #SNDMakes in D.C.

Survey participants also showed avid interest in being able to participate in an #SNDMakes during the annual workshop. Our program team is working on bringing the hackathon event, which has already produced great projects in Indianapolis and Boston this year, to D.C. next spring. We’re coordinating with Kyle Ellis, who has spearheaded those two cool weekends, to make it happen.
The Vox Product team has two good posts — one from Indy and another from Boston — about what team members learned from being part of this collaborative design community. Also check out this terrific video from Upstatement, the Boston-based design firm that hosted the last #SNDMakes, to get a feeling for what you could expect if you take part.

We want to see you in Washington
Please let us know what else we can do as we make program decisions. We are determined to build a forward-looking workshop with collaboration at its core. Our focus is on design as a craft uniquely qualified to help people make sense of the world. We hope it’s an awesome three days in D.C. — and it will be if you show up. See you in Washington this spring!
Have something to share? Send me a note at mattmansfield@northwestern.edu or ping our team with the #SNDDC hashtag on Twitter, which we are always monitoring. That #SNDDC hashtag is also a good way to keep up with news.