The message is simple

Thanks to my genius colleague, Cliff, this sweet yet simple Yearbook banner hed for our online High School section came together swimmingly. The print theme for 2005-06 has the athletes' parents writing their recollections about their kids – what made them great sports figures and why they're great children to boot – so I decided to go with a postcard/postmark theme online for our front.

To do this, I found a stock back-of-postcard image (thanks, Google), cropped it, touched it up, added some color and reworked it with our text style, etc., and wham-o: instant banner. Cliff added the finishing touches and put me in mind to play with Photoshop and play with posterizing, going for a rough around the edges, well-worn look. I like how this one turned out; the simplest banners are often the best, I believe.

get me rewrite

After unsuccessfully searching for a website/blog specifically dedicated to the issues people like me, who edit and design online sports pages for newspaper websites, face on an everyday basis, I've decided to use this blog as a forum to discuss, critique, display designs and whatnot.

Further details as events warrant. Or when I can figure out how to get this stuff to work. But if you're an newspaper online sports editor/designer, let's chat.

Here's an example of a banner hed (.jpg) that a former co-worker put together for our Braves page online. She selected the photos, which I approved, but the overall design elements and chatter text are my concept. We currently use this design for all of our sports banners, which promo columnists, blogs, contests, special splash pages, etc:

… and the ultimate "less is more" concept I used for our Masters 2006 splash page banner:

NOTE: All images and designs (copyright 2005-06) on this blog are the property, intellectual and otherwise, of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Cox Newspapers, Inc.