TAKEAWAY: In search of a famous page, with a memorable photograph and a perfect headline to match. What it took to get a copy of one of the most talked about food section fronts ever.
It’s a story primed for a detective-style thriller. I am thinking of the TV show with that old and disheveled detective Columbo (whom folks of a certain age may remember, as played by the great Peter Falk).
Except in this case there is no murder.
Instead, there is a forever LOST famous page, a food section front from the Orange County Register of the mid 1980s, created by the talented Nanette Bisher.
It was a story about eggs.
The photo: a stiletto shoe with the thinnest of heels, stepping into the yolk of an egg.
The sharp, memorable headline: Eggs—beat them, whip them, but respect them in the morning.
Why the fame?:
It was a page that reached far, like out of the park. It accomplished that,and more. How about mortality? It is a page remembered by anyone who was doing newspaper design in the 1980s, especially if they attended one of our Poynter Institute seminars, where it became the darling of presenters and students alike.
But it was not just a pretty page. It was representative of what can happen when writer, editor and designer get together, discuss the story and then arrive at the best way to illustrate it.
Rush to March 2014: my Poynter colleague, Dr. Roy Peter Clark and I are speaking at the upcoming South by Southwest conference in Austin. Our topic is all about WED and the marriage of words and visual images. We need to show this page.
But the page was NOWHERE to be found. We all remember it. It is forever in the newspaper morgue of our subconscious, but we need to show it to the new generation.
My Columbo detective work starts
I started with Nan Bisher, of course. While no longer at the Orange County Register, I assumed she had a copy.
No such luck.
“Oh, Mario, so sorry, but that is the most popular piece of my portfolio and I have had so many requests for it that now I just simply don’t have a copy anymore, but I will keep looking,” she tells me.
I then turned to Marshall Matlock, who for more than 20 years directed the SND competition, since that page was a big winner.
“I don’t have these files with me, Mario,” wrote me Marshall. “But I am contacting the SND folks to see if this is available.”
Everyone is reminding me that the famous EGG page was published before digital storage existed.
I don’t care which way I get the page, I remind everyone. I will do what it takes to get it to our Keynote presentation. Just find me the page.
Enter Orange County Register
So, why not try the OCR itself? After all, the page was published at this newspaper.
Lucky for me, I know folks there, including Jeff Goertzen, that master of infographics, and also my former Syracuse University graduate student, Pam Marshak, who has been an editor there for many years.
“I have passed the ball to Pam, Mario,” writes Jeff.
“Mario, you may be in luck. My husband Tom, who never throws anything away, has that page in his collection,” Pam writes.
Eventually, Pam locates the photographer who took the famous photo of that stiletto shoe stepping on the egg. He, in turn, has the image as it appeared on the cover of a magazine called Photographer. So now I had the image, but still NOT the page as designed by Nan Bisher.
Meanwhile a faded version of the page appears
Nan is happy to have found a faded version of the page and writes me:
‘Mario: I dug out this faded color key I have. So recreating the type on the magazine cover will be no problem.”
Not to mention that the model who allowed for her leg to slip into a stiletto shoe for the photo shoot, Bambi Nicklen, a designer herself, got into the act too offered to restore the color.
I was feeling much better already, especially when Nan reminded me that Bambi was an amazing designer and “kills with Photoshop.”
We were ready for a killing here, for sure.
A dialog about WED today
While desperately searching for the image, we found ourselves engaged in a real dialog about WED, the marriage of words and visual images, and where it stands today. In fact, the creator of the page, Nan Bisher, too, started to put WED into perspective.
“Do you ever see design in newspapers anymore? Where something was conceived, found or made, and paired with typography to tell the story between the lines of type? WED, not pages where someone was handed the page elements with no time to think, just page flow deadlines to meet. “
Nan has an idea who is doing WED well today:
“The best example of WED I have seen lately is the absolutely stunning work done for Restoration Hardware. The main catalog is a staggering example of having a message and communicating it with every touch of the page (I have only seen the digital volumes.) Each image is beautiful. The spreads that elevate furniture and accessories to a sublime level of desire. The back of the book that holds a simple object, this knob, to the same rigor of lighting and page style. Or BOSTON magazine’s Boston Marathon Bombing cover. With running shoes actually worn in the race, hundreds of pairs, shaped into a heart. Tops on the front cover, soles on the bottom cover. “
There is an egg in the attic
But, voilá, the most famous page in the history of newspaper design was eventually located in an attic. Yes, Pam’s husband, Tom, who insisted all along that he remember showing that page in his own presentations, kept looking through his collection of old slides, and, just when all of us were giving up hope of securing the page, Tom found it.
While the famous Egg and Stiletto Shoe page will be used to illustrate the good things that happen when the word people and the visual people get together at the onset of planning a story, we now will also add the story of The Hunt for the Elusive Egg and Stiletto Shoe Page, a thrilling story in its own right.
Our thanks to all who helped with the detective work.
In Austin, at SXSW March 10, Roy Peter Clark and I will put this masterpiece of a page on the screen and remind a new generation of journalists and designers about the power of a good visual that reflects what the story is all about.
All is well that ends well. Already Roy is suggesting that we should adopt the headline on the EGG page as our motto: “Beat us, whip us, but respect us in the morning!”
“It also adds some kinky spice to the eternal question: “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”
Nan Bisher gives us the behind the scenes story of the Egg and Stiletto Page
The original idea started with a headline and an image in my head at The Register newspaper in Orange County, California.I told the Food section editor Joanne Miner of her idea, and if Joanne ever could find stories to go with the idea. A breakfast cover. Joanne, who was great and generous to work with, she would pull together a cover package to work with the image and headline. Now this is backwards to how the real world operates. Words usually wag the presentation dog. .Brian Smith, then a staff member and exceptional studio photographer said he would help. Bambi Nicklen, a designer at the paper, said she would model. And off we all went. Because in those days images where made in the camera. And the color reproduction at The Register was very good. But the first step, the photograph, had to be perfect. So Brian rented a 4X5 camera. Knowing this would be a full page enlargement. He purchased the backdrop, a highly reflective large sheet of black mylar. I think Bambi purchased the red shoes and the seamed nylons. And we got a dozen eggs, breaking many to get the perfect half shells. Everything was done in the camera, there were about 5 lights on this image, and poor Bambi had to keep her other leg out of the frame and out of the way of the lights. So basically she stood on one leg…for a long time.The page was then composed by literally sketching the image onto a full page blue grid page board, including where the reversed type would be.The type was set, waxed and pasted up by hand, a mechanical was made and it was knocked out of the background of the photo in the color lab.The story is even better because there was a problem processing the sheets of film, so Bambi and Brian went back to the studio over the weekend with a new dozen eggs. It was important that the heel sat in the egg, but not rupture it. That tension was what I wanted.They get to the studio and out of the dozen eggs, eleven have double yolks. What are the chances of that! So they had one egg. It was much easier to rupture the yolk than not. So that we got this photo and this page was a great effort of colleagues and friends and the camaraderie that existed at The Register. And then the section editor allowed us to publish it, and the paper’s editor allowed us to publish it. We were encouraged to do our best work at The Register. And so it goes.