The Wall Street Journal published a story today about so-called crazy ants that are becoming a nuisance in the Gulf Coast. Apparently these ants lack a harsh bite but can kill animals and chew through electrical wires and cables.
What I found interesting about the story was the design treatment. This hard-news story ran in the news section on Page A3. Yet, despite the traditional stodginess of the news section, the designer placed three small black-and-white graphics of ants in the story gutters. None of the graphics interfered with the readability of the story and they added zero to the information. What they did add was a bit of surprise. They made me stop and think, hey, my serious newspaper can have a little fun. The graphics were simple and small, even amateurish to some degree, but someone thought, "I'm gonna take a chance and have a bit of fun."
Bravo.
Yes, it was a hard news story on an invasion that allegedly is causing lots of money in damage. But it's not like we're placing missile graphics on a North Korea story. Let's have a bit of fun on a Saturday, people. (For reference sake, here's the web version of the story, which does not have the same design treatment).
When I first became a newsroom editor 15 or so years ago, my boss used to tell us to "surprise and delight." The goal was to publish at least one thing a day that was different and so engaging people were left with a positive feeling about their newspaper.
That's exactly how I felt after seeing crazy ants crawling all over my, um, crazy ants story.
Yey, I fully expect design traditionalists to be up in arms at the prospect of one of America's most trusted newspapers playing with the public trust by placing "silly" graphics into a serious news story.
I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing after several Google searches and scans of a few popular design forums. Perhaps I missed something or a coordinated counterattack will come over the next few days.
My hope is that the silence is a reflection that we've turned a corner in which serious, traditional newspapers can have a little fun and display some creativity in presenting solid reporting in new ways. My fingers are crossed.
Logan Molen
Just ran across another use of ants as a design treatment in the Spring issue of Good magazine.
The issue, whose focus is on transportation, featured seven ants on the edges of a story subtitled "Why ants never get stuck in traffic and what we can learn from them."
The online version of the story too was published sans ants.