14 Design Journal No. 92 | Fall 2004 | www.sdn.org

By David KordalskiTHE PLAIN DEALER

And so it began. At 8:46 a.m. eastern standard

time, on a crisp, beautiful September 11th, the fi rst of two planes blasted into the World Trade Center.

We all know what happened next in New York, Washington D.C. and a fi eld near Pittsburgh nearly three years ago.

Lives changed. Not just of those who died in the terror attack.

Not just of their survivors, their partners, their sons, daughters, grandchildren, friends. All our lives changed. And they are changing, still.

America changed, too. Some say it is stronger now. Others contend it is fractured and weakened on the world stage. That’s for the politicians and pundits to decide.

All I know is that for one terrible, horrible, wonderful time, journalists were at their best. When the world was darkened by tragedy, it was journalists — and a high proportion of them visual journalists — who lit the fi rst lamps of sanity. We offered the fi rst glimmers of hope. And fanned the fi rst fl ames of outrage.

We did that fi rst with indelible still images: Surreal skies made all that more blue by the contrast of an orange fi reball, then two. A jet, forever trapped like an insect in amber, moments before impact. Dust-covered workers, dazed and dumbfounded. Men and women jumped hand-in-hand, choosing their own destiny one last time. Twisted metal. Tortured faces. Offi ce paper and family pictures, tattered remnants of the everyday, scattered in bits on sidewalks. A fl ag wrested from the rubble and raised, phoenix-like, by three fi remen as a beacon of American resilience.

Then with headlines, in quiet voice and defi ant tones: “ATTACK” “Horror,” “Nightmare,” America’s Darkest Day,” “We Mourn,” “Terror

Hits Home,” “BASTARDS!” And — ultimately — with unity

and purpose. Newsrooms dropped traditional squabbles and territorial posturing. True, in tough times and breaking stories we often do, but it was different this time. Few “word covers picture, picture covers graphic” games were played during these days. Instead, we let the story unfold, poking and prodding it when necessary. The images needed room and we were smart enough to know it. Civility ruled and questions like “What do we need to communicate?” guided the good work.

Across the nation, words and pictures came together in pages that were remarkably powerful and provocative, altogether diverse yet eerily similar.

The Asbury Park (NJ) Press expanded the canvas of its front page to wrap around the back in an attempt to convey a story incomprehensibly big. USA Today, the nation’s largest paper,

abandoned its successful formula. The Austin American Statesman’s black and white image of ash-covered survivors walking from Ground Zero was a designed to move the story beyond television, beyond material wreckage and down to human terms.

We expect bold pages from leaders like The San Jose Mercury News or The Detroit Free Press, and they did not disappoint. “The level of energy in the visual storytelling does not drop off after the attacks,” SND judges raved about The Merc, and about The Freep they said “The reader can see the way the paper reinvented itself on deadline to handle these events.”

But it was in the staid New York Times where innovation and intelligent packaging was most evident. With the added touch of visual journalists in a bastion of text uber alles, the thinking behind 9-11’s most comprehensive coverage was fl awless. From the deft hand on page one, to the strong inside display, to the clear, consistent, reader-driven graphics, to the poignant profi les of each and every victim over the course of a calendar year, The Times coverage was extraordinary in scope and always in proportion to the events. A calming, familiar, authoritative voice, every single day — all the while living in the eye of the storm.

Especially groundbreaking were The Times’ graphics, which “made clarity out of calamity,” in the words of the SND judges who awarded them Best of Show honors. No matter the personal hardship borne from proximity to Ground Zero, The Times graphics staff steadfastly stayed on mission: Objectively explaining the large and small of the news with equal fervor — why the towers fell, the path of the planes, who was lost, who was responsible, how lower Manhattan would be reclaimed, where to help, what trains still ran. From the ashes, answers.

After the fi rst incomprehensible moment, as the minutes fl owed

A nation challenged

MOMENT

The amplitude of the event de-manded an equal response and an equal display of emotion.

9/11: A DAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

The amplitude of the event de-

Continued on Page 17

www.sdn.org | Fall 2004 | Design Journal No. 92 15

9/11: A DAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

The graphics, photos and pack-aging at the New York Times set a new standard for visual journalism.

16 Design Journal No. 92 | Fall 2004 | www.sdn.org

A DAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING: 9/11

The De-troit Free Press, judges said, reinvented it-self on dead-line to handle the amplitude of news fol-lowing the attacks.

SND judges remarked how the level of energy in the visual story telling in San Jose Mercury News pages did not drop off after the attacks.

www.sdn.org | Fall 2004 | Design Journal No. 92 17

A year later, a quieter voice emerged, but just as powerful.

Anniversary coverage — at once both a history lesson and a forward glance — deftly avoided puncturing the thin skin of a wound just beginning to heal.

We used many tools as an invitation to contemplation: Subtle typographic treatments and generous white space, like The Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal, The Seattle Times and The Ball State Daily News; innovative illustration, like the candles of The Detroit Free Press or The Asbury Park Press; poignant photography used singly and strong, like The Hartford Courant’s reprise of an above-the-clouds shot of the towers or played in combination, like The Virginian-Pilot’s cover of familiar items — a watch, a policeman’s shoulder patch, a baseball and a license plate — transformed into icons of lives shattered a year prior, urging us to refl ect and remember.

And never to forget. David Kordalski

into hours, the hours liquefi ed into days, it was again photojournalism — stunningly displayed — that forever entwined horror, humanity and heroism.

A fi reman, luckier than most, pulled alive from the wreckage. Tear-stained twentysomethings clinging to pictures of missing loved ones as tightly as they held to hope. A president offering encouragement by bullhorn to rescue workers, exhausted but eager to get back on task. A huge fl ag unfurling like a bandage on the scar of the Pentagon. Ghostly fretwork, eerily beautiful when illuminated only by searchlights.

Another fi reman charging up WTC stairs as panicked offi ce workers desperately scrambled down was portrait of heroism so big that The Chicago Sun-Times ran it sideways, needing only sparse narrative to explain the circumstances of how the picture came to be.

New York City, still smoldering, bigger than a single sheet of San Jose Mercury News broadsheet could contain.

Faces of the victims — myriad mugshots from happier times — ran in too many papers to count. Some opted for long rolls of names superimposed on the skyline or in stark white type on a simple black fi eld, like the Pentagon dead in The Washington Post.

America’s neighbors and friends grappled with the scope of the events.

A love letter to Manhattan graced Canada’s The National Post’s Avenue section, dual images of Manhattan on a doubletruck, the missing towers

The only difference between the frames. Glasgow’s Sunday Herald saw the horror through the eyes of small-town America. El Periodico de Guatemala whispered “Tres Horas Que Cambiaron Al Mundo,” over a smoldering skyline. “Three Hours That Changed the World.”

Through it all, newspapers gave a numb public something tangible to hold onto. Context. Comprehension. Compassion. SND past president Phil Ritzenberg wrote of an anonymous e-mail from a newspaper reader — later printed in The Quill — that speaks well to peoples’ compelling need to touch and be touched by the printed page.

“And today, only today, reading accounts of what I saw with my own eyes yesterday, I fi nd myself moved to tears. Only on the printed page, not on the phosphor-dot screen, do I fi nd an understanding of what took place; only there is the air full of smoke, the smell of burning fuel, the choking dust, the sound of sirens.”

From this, for us, hope. Hope for what we do, hope for our craft, hope for communication.

Hope for the future.

David Kordalski is AME/Visuals at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, and director of SND’s education and training

A year passes, a new voice emerges

A year later designers stretched to tell the story in a different way.

A DAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING: 9/11Continued from Page 15