In the Spring 1994 edition of Design magazine, the publication of the Society of News Design, I wrote about the creation of a new kind of editor — the graphics editor.

It started very simply and quietly. Notes posted on bulletin boards on the walls 20 years ago hardly anticipated the revolution that was to come. In that note, the first modern newspaper graph­ics editor job was created. It was a new job for me at the Chicago Tribune: It was an unheard of job in the newspaper industry.

Mostly, the creation of this new type of editor­ship was lost in the turmoil and angst caused by the closing of the Tribune Company’s Chicago Today and the merger of dozens of “tabloid” journalists into the white-shirt and narrow-tie culture of the Chicago Tribune.

This article talked about and showed examples of the Tribune’s graphics desk’s work.