You’ve done it again. Great interview with Richard Curtis, one of the leaders in the newspaper design revolution and one of SND’s founding fathers. Not sure we had any founding mothers back then but times do change.
Richard, Robert Lockwood, Tony Majeri and a handful of others really kicked us graphically out of the 19th Century. And it is a good thing or we would be in deeper stuff than we are now.
I was with Gannett when Neuharth & Co. launched USA Today and a lot of editors said it would never last. They were real visionaries. USA Today not only survived but had a profound influence on the way editors think about what they do. My hat’s off to Richard and his buddies who proved the naysayers wrong.
Jerry Bellune, Lexington, S.C.

This is also a bit of an eye-opener. It almost seems like since USA Today’s release (and subsequent redesign), the rest of the industry seems to just be catching up to what they did over two decades ago.
Certainly, our pages look cleaner and more-design centric now, but USA Today still seems to be in a whole other realm of thought.

Anyway, keep up the great blogging.

I recall working on this subject when we did the “25 Influential Moments in News Design” for the SND workshop here in San Jose and writing the piece we published in Design. I remember how impressed I was — and still am — at the launch team’s ability to see around the corner.

You have to think that Richard must feel a little vindicated, 25 years later, that the early detractors had it wrong. Smart editing never goes out of style. Kudos to Richard on an enduring legacy!