We’re pleased to introduce you to this year’s candidates for the 2019 SND offices: Cristóbal Edwards and Dave Stanton for secretary-treasurer; Aly Morris for vice president; and Paige Connor for president. Voting is open to all SND members and will begin on Wednesday, Oct. 17, and continue through Wednesday, Nov. 28. Election results will be announced on Friday, Nov. 30.
Under its bylaws, the Society operates a leadership “ladder” where the Secretary/Treasurer is automatically nominated to be Vice President and the Vice President to be President. Those nominees still must be elected, but the two higher offices run unopposed. There will be a write-in option for each office.
Candidate bios are below.
HOW THE ELECTION WILL PLAY OUT
How and who votes: The election is conducted electronically (SND members will get an email). Voting is open to all members. Election results are tallied by a third-party administrator, Vote-now.com LLC, overseen by James Claiborne, Managing Partner.
Voting deadline: Voting will end at 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 28
Lapsed or non-members can renew or join before the ballot is issued in order to vote. Renew your membership here.
Questions? Contact Executive Director Stephen Komives at skomives@snd.org. The SND bylaws governing the election process is here.
YOUR CANDIDATES ARE:
For the position of SND president:
• Paige Connor, Vice President of Strategic Design @agencyq (Washington D.C.)
For the position of SND vice president:
• Aly Morris, Features designer, Chicago Tribune Media Group
For the position of SND secretary/treasurer:
• Cristóbal Edwards, Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s school of journalism
Santiago, Chile
• Dave Stanton, design researcher, prototyper, developer (Gainesville, FL)
SECRETARY/TREASURER
Cristóbal Edwards
Cristóbal Edwards teaches reporting, writing, visuals, and news design to master and undergraduate journalism and design students at Universidad Católica de Chile. He has given presentations and workshops about those topics in China, Latin America, Scandinavia, and the USA.
He is the Society for New Design’s international relations director and a member of the Executive Committee. He became an SND member in 1999 and has been appointed to several board positions: co-director of the education committee in 2001, Region 12 (South America) director in 2004, SND Foundation in 2008, and to the current position in 2014.
Cristóbal was TIME magazine’s news correspondent in Chile for nine years until late 2007. He has also freelanced as a writer and photographer for several Chilean, North American and UK media. As a photographer, he has exhibited documentary photography in Chile, England, and Norway. He graduated with a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1998. He enjoys traveling, scuba diving, photography, design, writing, and speaks several languages.
Goals for SND
- Continue to keep SND current and relevant to our members and explore new ways to attract participants.
- Promote SND’s growth in new areas, such as TV infographics and tabloid news design.
- Renovate SND’s commitment to underrepresented cultural, ethnic, national, and social groups of people.
- Strengthen joint projects between SND members from different regions or programs around the world, such as the ÑH Awards, European summits, and infographics workshops in China.
- Nurture SND relations with high school, college, professional associations, and NGOs about the value of visual journalism in factual, reliable news information.
- Develop mentoring programs to help bring together SND senior and junior members in visual journalism training and research.
Vision
I believe that as a society, SND is a collaborative initiative centered on our shared passion for excellence in quality news design around the world. It offers us, members, and our guests a creative, stimulating, and fun space. It also needs our spirited commitment, best ideas, and hard voluntary work. SND is often a wonderful enterprise, and sometimes, quite an endeavor. We all are SND, so it’s up to all of us to keep it going, make it grow, and even shine in the years to come.
Once upon a not very distant time, newspapers around the world ruled in news design. The Society of Newspaper Design was conceived in the summer of 1978 and founded a year later. Decades later technology made it possible to offer digital news, but hardly anyone knew how to make it sustainable let alone profitable. We became the Society for News Design in 1997.
About 10 years ago, the effects of global media melting led to some of the most dramatic changes in the history of the news industry. Newspapers and online news around the world have struggled since, and SND has, too. Our response was to review and then update our mission, vision, and code of ethics. We also strengthened our commitment to our members and values with new activities that offer a better value to their current job, study area or personal interest. Our Society serves news media and visual communication students, professors, and professionals, and it invents, makes, promotes and teaches excellence in visual journalism around the world.
In 1997, when I was a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism, fresh and brilliant news design professor Susan Mango Curtis (SND president in 2004) introduced me to SND. I felt like I had arrived at a fascinating new world. I became a member in 1999 and the first workshop I attended was that same year, in Copenhagen. I have missed only one since.
Our society has introduced me to fantastic, fun and creative friends, and has given me a wealth of knowledge for my academic and professional work. The several SND positions that I have been appointed to have allowed me to give back in what I consider one of the pillars of true democracy: excellence in the design of factual news and responsible news commentary. Clarity, precision, interest and even awe in relevant and current information are key to a public life as free, fair and fraternal as possible.
I am now a candidate for an elected position because I want to continue serving our Society. I want to help support the initiatives of SND members aimed at better serving the needs and dreams of people studying, teaching and working in visual journalism. I want to contribute to making SND valuable, relevant and interesting for all as not only the media but also democracy face challenges to source access and reliable, relevant information.
Thank you very much for your membership and interest in the Society for News Design.
A favor
I hope you vote in the coming election. We all need –and benefit from– your participation in this, our visual journalism collaborative enterprise.
Dave Stanton
Dave Stanton is a design researcher, prototyper, and delivery lead. He explores the possibilities of human-to-human and human-to-computer interactions.
Dave earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida while collaborating with The Poynter Institute on several eye-tracking studies investigating web design, tablet storytelling, photo captions, and user-generated content. He collaborated with Northwestern University, PBS NewsHour, and the American Press Institute to create prototypes exploring new ways for social dynamics to empower news literacy. As a consultant, he has served as the technical lead and design advisor on mobile, web, and voice projects for Weight Watchers, CVS, Chick-fil-A, Johnson & Johnson, Reebok, and others.
He has presented at conferences across industries and continents including SXSW, MozFest, SRCCON, SND, NAHJ, ONA, AEJMC, SPJ, FSPA, as well as numerous workshops organized by SND, The Poynter Institute, the National Science Foundation.
He strives to help young professionals explore their passions through mentorship, coaching, and networking. If elected, he will strive to increase opportunities for young professionals to be involved with SND as well as to find avenues for mid-career journalists to expand their skillsets.
Dave will help SND hold true to traditional design values while exploring new platforms to expand how we tell stories, improve how we convey empathy, and increase the public trust in news.
Goals for SND
- Explore emerging platforms that may be visual but also may be voice, touch, or hybrid interface types
- Connect SND with other professional associations, product companies, and educational institutions to improve knowledge sharing across disciplines
- Promote SND as a home for design professionals outside of traditional newsrooms
- Push even harder to include more voices and perspectives
- Support the SND Campus program to help the next generation of SND members navigate their professional growth in a landscape where the paths are continually changing
- Increase the output of the SND Foundation as a vehicle to fund education and research benefiting both membership and news design more broadly
Twitter: @gotoplanb
VICE PRESIDENT
Aly Morris
Aly Morris is a features designer at tronc’s design and production studio. Her portfolio has won both digital and print awards and she was honored to help judge the SND Best of News Design 37th Edition competition. She has worked on both print and digital sides of newsrooms across the country. She previously was the design director at RedEye before joining the Chicago Tribune’s feature design team.
She believes in bringing members together, continued education, creating a work/life balance and inspiring the next generation. When Aly isn’t designing section fronts, you can find her teaching a community yoga class, rearranging her indoor plant jungle at her apartment or plotting her travel arrangements for the next SND conference. She loves this inspiring community of creative designers and appreciates the nomination to this position.
Twitter: @alyson_morris
PRESIDENT
Paige Connor
Paige Connor has been championing the craft of design — and the Society for News Design’s role in visually explaining the news — since college, when she joined Ball State University’s SND chapter as a student in 2000. She’s been active in SND ever since.
For the past two years she has partnered with Tyson Evans to build and create a multi-year plan for SND, focusing on the governance and financial areas with the goal of building more structure and stability organization, as well as work to expand SND’s reach internationally and help promote workshops and events around the globe.
During her time as SND Director of Membership she help develop a multi-year strategy to increase awareness about what SND does and enabling those who benefit from SND events and outreach to see the value of membership and being part of SND’s global community.
Paige is very passionate about innovation and change — not only in design across platforms — but engaging members to create a community within SND. She continually pushes for a community of inclusion as the Society evolves and has greater emphasis on motivating teams and managing for success.
For her commitments and work at SNDDC and SNDSF, Paige received President’s Awards for excellence in volunteerism for both workshops. In addition to volunteer coordinating for SNDCLT, she is also working with various board members on sponsorship for the conference and SND as an organization.
Paige has earned SND honors for her portfolio, as well as other awards for her design work throughout her career, which includes stints on the cross-platform team at Bloomberg, design director for Politico, assistant sports editor for the Washington Times and art director for two magazines.
Twitter: @paigekconnor