Case study
NewsNation
From a three-hour newscast to a network on its way to 24-hour news, during a pandemic, with a design team that had to be built at the same time.
- Roles
- Manager, Graphic Design / Art Director (Sept 2020 – Oct 2021, co-managed) → Manager, Creative Innovation & Production (Oct 2021 – May 2023)
- Team
- Seven designers and a motion designer; three promoted to supervisory roles
- Scope
- Show branding, the 2021 relaunch, live-event packages, the graphics template system, training nationwide
- Results
- Primetime audience more than doubled 2021→2023 (46K → 101K average); 93K households in primetime for 2022 midterm coverage
The challenge
Nexstar was turning WGN America into a national news network. The design group had to brand new shows faster than the schedule could add them, replace ad-hoc graphics requests with a system producers could use without a designer, and cover two presidential debates, a vice-presidential debate, and an election with a team still forming.
Brand: news for the engaged citizen
For the July 2021 relaunch, NewsNation partnered with Leo Burnett on the creative marketing campaign. I designed the brand-strategy artifact the teams worked from: the triangle that puts the human truth, that people feel unrepresented when their values aren't reflected, and the product truth, all sides and bottom-up journalism, against the brand enemy, elitism, and lands on the brand benefit, empowerment. Everything the design team made afterward had to sit inside that triangle.
Eight shows, one network
Each new show got key art, an open, and a template family, so producers could build routine graphics without a designer. On-air frames from the shows the system carried.
Two debates, one election, a new network
Live coverage packages for the Trump–Biden presidential debates and the Harris–Pence vice-presidential debate, designed inside the network's first sixty days, then the election-night system: candidate screens, tickers, interactive maps. The midterm cycle that followed drew 93K households to primetime coverage.
Obits, trials, and the numbers of the day
Thirty-one new Ross Xpression templates, a 30% larger library, meant the graphics below could be built to air by producers and writers, in the network's look, without waiting on the design desk. I trained those roles across the network's locations.
Eight people, three promotions, one pipeline
I co-managed the group of eight through year one with a fellow manager, and ran it alone from 2021, when they left and were not replaced; three of the team moved into supervisory roles. Ad-hoc requests were replaced with task assignment and deadline accountability, which cut errors and sped delivery. I brought Blender in as the 3D pipeline and trained the team on it.
Results
Between 2021 and 2023 the network's primetime audience more than doubled, from a 46K average to 101K, and its 25–54 audience doubled in 2023 alone. Over the 2022 Christmas weekend NewsNation beat Fox News and MSNBC in the 25–54 demo in primetime hours. Those are network results with many authors; the show brands, the live-event packages, and the template system were the part I owned. Nielsen figures as reported by Adweek, Variety, The Desk, and Mediaite.