Michael Stanaland

To say that I was flattered when the folks at CQ-Roll Call asked me to help redesign the daily print Roll Call product would be a gross understatement. And even though I was already working on the WBJ redesign, that’s just not the sort of request you can say no to.

Roll Call had been without a redesign for even longer than the Business Journal, and was thus a mix of dated typography, quirky stock art icons and styles left behind from myriad designers that had worked there over the years. Roll Call is also pretty conservative (visually speaking) and they focus much more on long-form writing than design. So the design goal was pretty simple: A clean, simple and unified look that would bring some visual sophistication to their sophisticated stories. For my part, I pushed them to do more shorter-form stories, run larger photos and make more use of color.

Because of the way they are staffed, Roll Call doesn’t use many graphics. The poll map was very easy to update and provided a visual anchor for the At the Races standing feature.

Roll Call was resistant to color on the nameplate and section flags. The nameplate ended up black, but the inside sections are now color.

Typefaces used are Lyon Display, Lyon Text and Graphik — all available from my pal Christian Schwartz over at Commercial Type.