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When Ken Johnson, online editor for The Patriot Ledger, forwarded this page to me, it was easy to see why this interestingly nice photo package needed a closer look.
The page design was done by Jen Wagner, who had this to say:
I hope Greg (Derr, supervising photographer) has something more brilliant to tell you next week when he returns from vacation than I do.. for he told me about this shoot, I said great, he turned it in, I did layout after a short toying with "should readers have to write in and guess and we announce a winner? or should I just print a key on the next page?" I went with the latter.
It was a great, fun idea from Greg. I hope readers enjoy it. It might be fun to try and do something like this a few more times in a year of some other things... not sure what... Greg?
So I contacted Mr. Derr, who shared what inspired him to shoot this package:
It started with my kids, we play "I Spy" a lot while driving or waiting in the car. To make it hard we look for letters sometimes instead of colors and shapes. For our weekly "LedgerLand" photo page, I wanted to do a piece on local businesses for the Christmas shopping season. Then I thought I could combine the two into a kind of a puzzle for readers. I knew some letters would be tough , but X was the only one I could not find as the first letter of a business. Having a yellow pages and Google helped. It was fun and easy to shoot between assignments.
What to love about this package?:
• The "I Spy" connection
• The tie-in to local businesses
• The reader quiz
• The clean and simple page design
• The ability for other papers to easily replicate this idea.
"Replicate" sounds so much better than "steal," doesn't it?
Nice job all around.
Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media.
Contact him at jgreco@gatehousemedia.com.
