rss feedDesigner Roger Black: “We have to make it good enough so that people will pay for it”
First, before I get to the video above, I want to say that my thoughts are with the people of Haiti.
And now this: I never realized who Roger Black is until I came across his 8-minute video clip posted on the Society for News Design.
As a journalist, my job was to chase information and news events, probe, analyze and then file my writing for the Web and paper. Many paper products, as we know, have faded into history.
So, I was out of the loop with leading designers in the United States, such as Black.
He’s a former staff member of The New York Times. He has lent his design skills to numerous high-profile mainstream media clients, including Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone.
In his video chat, he talks about transformation in the media industry and the decade in design. He talks about how mass media has become media of one.
Some of his ideas I’m sure you’ve probably thought about. But one sentence regarding content producers (writers, photographers, designers, editors, artists) and the way he stated the idea caught my attention:
We have to make it good enough so that people will pay for it.
Pay for it?
As John Cleese might say in his British accent in one of those old Monty Python clips: “Oh, yes. That’s right.”
Of course, I’m just joking with that reference to Cleese.
Black also reminds us that with the implosion of news media as an institution: “We have to think like free people.”
I like the video because he uses a conversational tone and a nice degree of curiosity to convey his ideas. He’s also a talking head – not this type, even though this type is worth watching.
I recall the days, decades ago, when it was a hot topic to analyze the talking head phenomenon on network and cable news shows. Back then, that was the platform.
If you yelled loud enough, that was even better for the buzz generator industry.
Hint: If you’re still in the loud-talking, talking head television game, just remember to wear glasses that make you appear oh-so intelligent. There are international brands, too. With clothing, neutral colors also look better on camera.
As Black explains, this has transformed to personal media, the “media of me.”
His online talk is nice and civil in comparison these days to people who use the Web with the tone of I-know-it-all, listen-to-me. That’s just online clutter.
Sadly, there is something to be said about loudness and brashness to break through the online clutter to grab people’s attention in what others are calling the attention economy.
Two quick observations:
1. I agree that mass media has dwindled down to a media of one. Companies are thriving in this arena because you can download one song to your iPod when you want it. But if that’s the case, how do media designers build Web sites and newspaper or magazine pages to attract to this ever-growing fractured audience?
I suppose that during major national and international stories, such as Haiti or a presidential election, people will turn in to find out what mainstream journalists are uncovering and reporting.
Yet, it’s very easy to flip from a mainstream news report about a heavy – or not so heavy – topic and jump back to that new song on your iPod.
I recently was at the airport and spotted a young woman who was wearing a sweatshirt with the name of a college on it.
She had flipped open her laptop computer and was scanning the screen. She typed when necessary. Her earphones were plugged in, giving the sign that she was listening to music or audio from perhaps an online video.
But at the same time, she was checking her cell phone and texting to people in between listening to audio, typing on her computer and watching the screen.
A tip of the multimedia hat to her, of course.
I only do one of those tasks at one time.
2. As I learned in economics – and I admit that the theories I learned might be outdated given The Great Recession’s awesome power – when you have more people in the labor pool for an industry, the wages and salaries of those in that industry typically drop.
So, if this is still true, a compelling, solid journalistic or media product is on the market.
But if there’s free, semi-interesting but not as solid information (from a journalistic or design perspective) out there, will people pay for it, meaning the solid media product based on traditional journalistic standards?
The classic example are newspaper subscriptions: Why pay for a printed product to be driven from the plant to your house when you can click on blogs and news sites that don’t require money?
Pay walls and micropayments have been tossed about as ideas. But readers also can just turn the online channel and go find information elsewhere.
In the past, I’ve also questioned whether a new American price will emerge from The Great Recession, especially in the short-term.
The one great thing that Black does, though, is to encourage all of us to think in new ways.
That is essential especially as new thinkers and new ways will certainly blaze the path given the implosion of the mainstream media.
Another great thing that Black does on his own blog: He links to other sites, such as The Font Bureau and Danilo Black, which are worth visiting for visual, type and content ideas.
You also can visit Black’s site to see a recent history of design, including covers for Time.
