After the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, a graphic appeared in the New York Times showing where they hit and which floors were damaged.
The graphic integrated words and visuals to communicate the story.
In the fall, the MSU School of Journalism will teach students to do just that by introducing a cross-disciplinary information design initiative. It will teach using both images and words to provide information. The program will be taught by Karl Gude, a former Newsweek information graphics director, and will integrate journalism, advertising, studio art and telecommunication.
"If you think about packaging news — whether it's print, online or broadcast — it's made up of words, images and graphics," Gude said. "Very few schools teach graphics."
The school has been working toward offering the program for almost two years, said Jane Briggs-Bunting, director of the School of Journalism and president of the State News Board of Directors.
"The problem in a lot of news organizations is that if they hire a graphic artist ... they don't know how to gather information," Briggs-Bunting said. "Journalism and art are kept far apart; we are marrying the two together."
The school put out a national search for someone to lead the information design initiative and Gude applied, she said.
"The irony is that he was pitching a very similar idea to universities on the east coast and none of them were interested," Briggs-Bunting said, adding that Gude's decision to come to MSU will help meet the goal to prepare students for journalism in the 21st century.
Gude said a problem with newspaper design is the insistence that graphics are taught to writers, not artists. The program will teach information design, where facts and information are used with visuals to present a story, he said.
"Whatever programs exist, for the most part, are teaching graphics to writers in the school of journalism," Gude said. "I've never seen a writer who could do a great cutaway of a human body or explain what happened that day at the World Trade Center."
Despite his success, Gude wasn't always pursuing the information-design field. When he landed his first design job in 1979, Gude said he was just an artist trying to find work in New York City.
It was during this time that Time magazine started using graphic design, and newspapers were picking up on it, he said. United Press International hired Gude at age 23 as graphics director to "jazz up" their pages.
"It went well. They gave me three months probation, and I lasted eight years," he said.
The world of graphics exploded in print media, Gude said.
Other jobs during his 27-year career include director of information graphics at the National Sports Daily, the New York Daily News and the Associated Press, according to a press release.
He said his learning has been through trial and error, and he is excited to pass on what he has learned to students, Gude said.
"I'm creating graphics to explain the news, using pictures and words when words alone aren't enough," he said.
