The Express Tribune’s creative process

An insider’s account of the creative department’s role in an editorial context

When I was asked to be a part of the creative team for The Express Tribune, I was a little apprehensive to join. How was a graphic designer going to fit into the workflow of a newspaper? I did not want to just create beautiful “artwork” that was supposed to be arbitrarily placed in 6 or 8 columns to fill space or tart up the news.

This was the thought process that existed in the glamorous world of publication design before The Express Tribune’s launch, and all seasoned veterans from the editorial world were also uncertain as to how a dedicated design team would contribute to editorial content.

That’s when the publisher, Bilal Lakhani, shared his vision on how the creative team would use their visual expertise to enhance editorial content and would not just be creating beautiful space filling graphics: he coined the term “visual journalists”, further legitimising his vision.

Over the last few years, the creative team I am a part of has created visuals in the form of info graphics, layouts, illustrations and special reports, each adding another dimension to editorial content and making it more accessible to the reader.

The challenges posed by integrating design and editorial, however, are great.

The biggest challenge perhaps is when tragedy strikes. How does one ‘design’ for a tragedy, that too on a deadline, without making it insensitive? This is best illustrated by our work for pieces such as the 2010 Air Blue crash, wherein design was integral in providing the reader with large amounts of information and data without feeling overwhelmed or the giving less meaning to the tragedy. Data, such as the passenger manifesto, photographs from the crash, authorities’ viewpoint on the crash, emotional and heartfelt reactions from the grieving families, were placed in a well-organised layout, using design to its full potential.

Moreover, with the use of design, the creative department has helped in demystifying mundane topics like the annual budget for its readers. Boring and convoluted data is given new life with the help of easy-to-interpret graphics and layouts. Suddenly, budget allocations, comparisons to last year’s budget are easy to grasp and understandable by the tax paying citizens of this country.

In the absence of photographs, our illustrators have managed to create a faithful interpretation of undocumented subjects; thus, giving a face to the stories that are able to stand out on their own merit without the overwhelming use of words.

The creative process, which starts from the unedited text, goes full circle with photographs, illustration, info graphics and layouts, creating a pleasing visual experience without fatiguing the reader. The end product is the perfect marriage of visuals and text coming together as graphic design.

That’s how a graphic designer fits in and is essential to the editorial world.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2015.