Featured 30 photos in Oct. 27 special Athens News tabloid section best of 15,000

ATHENS, Ohio (Oct. 27, 2008)—Local organic farmers, trash collectors and employees of sustainable businesses are among those featured in this year’s Athens News tabloid edition of Dawn to Dusk “Going Green in Athens County.”

More than 150 students in the School of Visual Communication explored the many ways in which Athens County residents are “going green” for this year’s annual Dawn to Dusk school-wide event, which took place primarily Oct. 17-20.

“It’s absolutely an extracurricular, volunteer effort by student and faculty,” VisCom Director Terry Eiler said of the 12th annual event. “No one is getting extra credit, or extra anything, to come together and have a four-day weekend, but it seems to be a lot of fun and allows us to look quickly at some serious topics.”

The actual photo shoot—from dawn to dusk, of course—took place Friday, Oct. 17. A marathon editing session followed on Saturday, Oct. 18, when faculty, assisted by students, edited an amazing 15,000 photos down to 300 for inclusion on the project’s Web site at www.viscomd2d.com, designed by an online team. At 4 p.m. that day, in what is affectionately called the “faculty face-off,” the final edit of 30 photos to be included in today’s tabloid Athens News feature was made.

Stan Alost, VisCom assistant director and associate professor, says this entails the faculty hanging prints of edited photos on the walls of several classrooms and then, together, making repeated passes through the display to choose the best of the best.

"This process leads to lively debate and discussion, and it’s interesting to see what opinions are closely held," Alost said. "It can be a little grueling. The faculty are editors with deep respect for one another, but also deep disagreements, at times. That’s interesting for students to see."

Once the final 30 photos are chosen, they are handed over to VisCom Assistant Professor Julie Elman and a team of student designers, who lay out the tabloid section, sponsored and funded this year by Nikon. The design team delivered the final product to The Athens News a mere four days later.

Elman said 14 students took on the challenge of designing the tabloid. To expedite the process, students worked on typography and color choices in advance.

"We realized from the start that the tab is a photo-driven piece, and so we thought about ways to keep the design understated so we didn't detract from the documentary images," she said. "Additionally, the students pulled together some content that could be used in conjunction with the photos and add more relevant material to the whole. We used the far left area on each spread in the tab for 'green' information we felt readers would find interesting and could use in their daily lives."

Today’s tabloid section is the culmination of the team’s effort.

“The colors are great this year,” Eiler said of the piece. “This is a much better run on newsprint than we’ve seen the past couple of years.”

As if this whole process doesn’t sound like enough orchestration and work, Eiler says the planning is what makes the event magical.

“Seniors and graduate students enrolled in the Newspaper Picture Story courses come up with the locations and events to be covered and put them on 3-inch-by-5-inch cards,” he said. “Photographers then pull them out of a hat. That’s how we get such diversity. We sit down and plan it out, but then there are wonderful accidents where people go to cover something and discover something else.”

This year’s event differs in that it is not part of the college-wide Soul of Athens spring project, as it has been in the past two years.

“We felt Dawn to Dusk was losing its identity, so we pulled it away from Soul of Athens,” Eiler said. “So Dawn to Dusk is once again a Fall Quarter project.”

Pick up a copy of today’s edition of The Athens News to see the tabloid section. For an in-depth look at “Going Green in Athens County,” visit www.viscomd2d.com.