Get inspiration, make new friends and expand your professional network at the same time.

Meet some of the best news designers in the world – in Oslo in April 2010:

Mark Porter (Aberdeen, Scotland) is a British publication designer and art director, and creative director of The Guardian. Formerly art director of ES, the Evening Standard magazine, the UK edition of Wired magazine, and Colors magazine. Directed the redesign of The Guardian, which was voted best-designed newspaper in the world by the Society for News Design in 2006.

Jacek Utko, Polish newspaper designer and architect, based in Warsaw. Former design director for Bonnier Business Press in Central Europe.  Has received several SND awards, including best designed newspaper in the world  twice (Poland’s Puls Biznesu and Estonia’s Aripaev). Recently he works a lot on web design.

Newspaper designer Jacek Utko suggests that it's time for a fresh, top-to-bottom rethink of the newspaper. (At this point, why not try it?) In his work, he's proved that good design can help readers reconnect with newspapers.

As the art director at Warsaw's Puls Biznesu in 2004, he redesigned this small business-focused newspaper and immediately won the SND award for world's best-designed newspaper. Readers responded, and circulation went up. He's now art director for the Bonnier Business Press, overseeing papers in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and the work he oversees consistently wins major prizes (including another SND world's-best in 2007 for Estonia's Äripäev), despite their small teams and limited resources.

Dr. Mario R. Garcia is CEO and founder of Garcia Media. Mario has 39 years of
Design and teaching experience and has redesigned over 550 newspapers/publications/websites worldwide including The Wall Street Journal,  Paris Match, L'Equipe Mag, La Tribune (France), The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit (Germany), El Mercurio (Chile),  Hindustantimes, The Hindu, Malayala Manorama and Mint (India), Il Secolo XIX (Italy), El Tiempo (Columbia), The Miami Herald, Goteborg-Posten (Sweden), The Charlotte Observer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, And many others around the world. Presently, Dr. Garcia helps media houses worldwide to rethink their products to survive in a multiplatform world. Most recently, his work with the financial dailies WirtshafttBlatt (Austria) and Handelsblatt (Germany) has had much acclaim for Garcia's strategies for convergence in the Newsroom.

He is author of a dozen books including his most recent, Pure Design. He served as
Professor at Syracuse University (New York) and the University of South Florida; and,
Since 1984, has been a faculty member at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St.
Petersburg, Fl., where he founded the visual journalism department, and has conducted Eye Track Research with Dr. Pegie Stark-Adam, and is now a member of the Institute’s National Advisory Board.
 

He has won numerous awards from the Society of News Design as well as receiving the
First Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a newspaper designer. He has
Summarized his insights and experiences about the emergence of tabloid formats
Worldwide in a publication titled “The Impact of the Compact”, available through the
Garcia Media website, www.garcia-media.com. Most recently, he has authored a chapter
On conversions to compact formats for a new book published by the World Association
Of Newspapers (WAN) titled “Shaping the Future of Newspapers: New Print Products”.
PEOPLE Magazine included Mario Garcia on its 2007 list of the 100 most influential
Hispanics in the world.

Mario posts a daily blog. See TheMarioBlog, www.garciamedia.com/blog
 
Ally Palmer is founding director of Palmer Watson. Ally has been a consultant for over ten years, and has a record of creating internationally acclaimed designs for newspapers across the world.

Before becoming a consultant, he was an award-winning group art director with The Scotsman's titles in his home town of Edinburgh, Scotland.
In recent years he has been involved in launches, redesigns and relaunches across Europe, South America, Africa and Russia. Four of Palmer Watson's projects, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), The European (London), The Herald (Glasgow) and Politiken (Copenhagen) have been included amongst the World's Best Designed Newspapers at the Society of News Design.

Juan Antonio Giner (Barcelona, Spain) is the president and founder of INNOVATION International Media Consulting Group and he is based in the UK. He was the first European Director of the SND, founder of the SND Spanish Chapter and the Malofiej Awards. As a consultant he has done work for more than one hundred media companies in Europe, America, Asia and Middle East. His last work was the creation of “I”, the new compact and compelling Portuguese daily-news-magazine, and the relaunch formula of Libération in Paris. Editor since 1999 of the INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPER Global Report published in Paris by the World Association of Newspaper (WAN). He was called  "An Outspoken Fan of Newspapers" by the Harvard University Nieman Journalism Lab.

Read his blog on www.innovationsinnewspapers.com


A detailed program will be ready in January 2010.