Nicole Bogdas returns to Florida — to the Orlando Sentinel
The wonderfully talented and energetic Nicole Bogdas is returning to Florida as a designer for the soon-to-be-redesigned Orlando Sentinel.
Nicole at SND/Orlando, August
2006. Photo by John Garcia.
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Sentinel AME Bonita Burton announced early Saturday:
I’m delighted to announce the addition of some impressive firepower during such an exhilarating and demanding time in Visuals.
Designer Nicole Bogdas needs no introduction to this group. We’ve admired her award-winning pages from Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach. We’ve watched her inspire young talent by leading our student sessions at SND Orlando. We’ve learned about design innovation through her as SND’s regional director. Now we’re going to put her energy and imagination to work rocket-fueling the redesign.
Nicole will be filling a new position created to ensure our visual plan of attack gels early in the day. She’ll report to Todd Stewart and will be deployed on a wide range of assignments from A1 to Local In-Depth to brainstorming story forms with reporters. She may also assist Nick, Wes and I with prototyping the redesign’s second phase, tentatively scheduled to launch late August.
Nicole is a native of the Chicago area and a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia. She and her 13-year-old cat, Clyde, will be relocating from St. Louis where she most recently worked for the Post-Dispatch. She’s excited to hit the ground running and insisted on being with us on launch day. If all goes according to plan, we’ll see her back in the newsroom on June 16.
Please join me in welcoming her aboard
A few samples of Nicole’s work:
Find more in her NewsPageDesigner gallery.
Nicole’s hire fills one of the more interesting job postings we’ve seen lately. And little surprise: Orlando sure seems to be the place to be these days. Bo has made a number of high-profile hires (and here, too) and then the Sentinel was chosen by its corporate masters to be the proving ground for a massive — and speedy — ground-up redesign of the entire chain.
Friday, I voiced my alarm and skepticism about what appeared to be a forced redesign. Then Bo was kind enough to give me a little sneak preview Friday night of what we can expect to see in the June 22 Sentinel.
To put it delicately: I ain’t worried about the Sentinel any more. This is going to be a hell of a redesign. And one I expect will be copied over and over — and not just by the other Tribune papers.
Being the world’s greatest mind-reader, Bonita sent me this message overnight:
You can post this early prototype of our A1 before and after — it’s all the same content. The redesign is all still a work in progress, but I think it will be a real improvement once we get the new type this fall.
And there you have it: The world premiere of the Sentinel’s new look! As usual, tickle the thumbnail for a larger view.
Congratulations, Bo and Nicole. And best wishes to the entire staff there in Orlando. We’ll be waiting to see the reaction to your experimentally new paper on June 22!
June 7th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Wow, congratulations to Nicole and the Sentinel! You’ll be in great hands, Nicole…
June 7th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
This is the start of something great.
We’re thrilled to welcome Nicole aboard…and can’t wait to unleash the new Sentinel (with her help now!) on the masses!
June 7th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Thanks,Charles! Nicole’s arrival is the icing on our very yummy new cake. Just to be clear, the prototype above shows the new design with the same content as the current look. But the kinds of stories we tell, and the way we tell them, are radically changing, too.
June 7th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Nicole is the schnittlebamschiznit. I’m bummed she’s leaving STL but stoked to see her rock Florida like a hurricane, again.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:07 am
I’m really excited to get started! Bo, Todd and Stephen have a great team that I can’t wait to work with. At the very least, I hope it will be a long time before Charles can unearth another terribly unflattering photo of me. :)
June 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Since I can’t post to Charles’s blog at work - congratulations, Nicole! You’re going to do great things in Florida again!
June 8th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Yay! Congrats on the new job. You’re gonna be great!!!
June 9th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Bo, are you able to share more info about the redesign? Considering that this appears to be a “forced redesign”, what kind of edicts did you guys get as far as design direction and objectives for the redesign? Can you elaborate on how “the kinds of stories we tell, and the way we tell them, are radically changing”?
June 9th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Nicole, best wishes to you as you come back down here to Florida. No flat tire this time, OK?
Bo, congrats to you and to the Sentinel for bringing Nicole aboard!
June 9th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
John, just to be clear, we were already redesigning for a web width reduction. We just moved up our time table when Tribune asked us to lead the way.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Bo. So did Tribune bring any new objectives/design directions to the table when they asked you to lead the way on their chain-wide redesign?
June 13th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Yes. What they brought was Lee Abrams, a terrific CIO whose job is basically to ride around the chain inspring people and making way for creative ideas to actually get fast-tracked into print.
He encouraged us to think about things like building a stronger franchise around our columnists, telling fewer stories but in more unusual ways (think ASFs), adopting a stronger point of view in how we communicate with readers. Most of all, he’s been intent on “liberating the design caste” (his words) in our newsrooms because he believes newspapers must be much more visual to survive.
So while we had a lot of things in the works before his arrival (in tandem with a web-width reduction), we went much further much faster than I’d have dreamed we could. His only real direction: Don’t be timid, don’t be subtle, don’t chicken out.
There’s a lot of crummy news around Tribune papers right now in terms of looming newshole cuts and staff reductions. But honestly, this renewed emphasis on visual journalism is creating the most esciting environment for innovation I think I’ve ever worked in. It’s a very mix of alternating depression and enthusiasm.
We’ve documented the entire journey here. It’s an invitation-only site, but I’ll waive in anyone off this board:
http://www.onlikedonkeykong.ning.com
June 15th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Looks like other bloggers have discovered the prototype and are spinning it as somehow being both a final product and a templates for the LA Times and every other Trib paper.
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/06/jocks-plan-shock-for-trib-co-readers.html
http://adrianmonck.com/2008/06/coming-soon-to-the-la-times/
http://www.tellzell.com/2008/06/i-got-interesting-heads-up-from-retch.html
June 16th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Yeah, well. Other bloggers are stupid.
.
Which is why all the smart kids read THIS blog. Right?
June 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
It’s not just the smart kids. I’m here, right?