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**Click on the pages for a closer look
It's now 2014, and I wanted to take a moment to point out a few things that I've done in the first week as examples of creativity and quick problem solving.
The front page in the top left quadrant is from Jan. 3. The top story was about Texas A&M being the No. 1 (and 2) seller in specialized license plates in Texas than of any other university. I had the idea to set the story apart by putting a license plate cover (because, face it, there are plenty of those on the road, too) around the story and talked it over with the editor.
After finding an image of a license plate cover, I had to compress the image to fit the space, thus distorting the text. I overlaid a text box with a maroon swatch and put a white inner shadow effect on both the top and bottom of the plate cover. Then, I chose a serif font and used A&M's official logo.This particular night those of us in the newsroom were also dealing with some technical difficulties. The server and Internet kept getting disconnected while we were on deadline, at one point for more than an hour. The IT specialist had been working on system updates all day. He thought it could be done without disconnecting us, but alas, technology... It doesn't always do what you want or intend for it to do.
The Jan. 4 front page, the top right quadrant, required some creative solutions, because I had only one page to flow/jump the stories. I knew from the inch count that one of the stories (ramp closures on Texas 6) would be small and could be contained to the front. However, that particular story was one of the last turned in and edited, so by the time I was able to put it on the page, it came up about two inches too short. I created a graphic on the fly that also gave some color to the lower half of the page.We are also being encouraged to use a new format/formula for the "sky boxes," or teasers above the masthead. This issue was my first attempt at the new format, which is displaying one as a primary, combining with a similar or lesser story that lacks art/a photo. The previous template called for three independent sky boxes.
In the lower right quadrant is also an example of creative problem solving. In the Sunday features section, Brazos Life, the center spread is reserved for local submissions and press releases, called Our Neighbors. Because of the holidays, we were a little low on submissions. Instead of enlarging the submitted photos to extreme proportions, I split the page with another lifestyle article and was able to play up the color. One of the supplied photos was a close up of wall paper. I used it as a background because I knew I could make it as large as I needed it and bring in the sides of the text box, contingent on the submissions or another lifestyle story or two.
