By Bai-Bai Sesay, reporting from Cotonou, Benin.
The International Institute for ICT Journalism Penplusbytes in collaboration with Highway Africa financed by Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) had held a week long workshop for Communication Designers in Cotonou, Benin Republic to demonstrate the importance of communication design in the newspapers and magazines industry in the West African sub region.
The workshop which ran from the 6th to 10th April 2009 was part of the Penplusbytes capacity building program for communication designers in West Africa.
The president of Penplusbytes, Kwami Ahiabenu II, told participants that design communicators and graphic design play a significant role in the media adding that most training programmes for the media fail to know their important role in the media.
“We have come out with this second workshop to train design communicators and graphic design in the sub region with the hope that they will train others locally in their various countries," he said
In a statement, the Programme Manager of OSIWA, Ben Akon told delegates the importance of the workshop and advised them to pay more attention on the training programme with the expectation that they will achieve alot of new things from the workshop.
He disclosed that they are planning to start organising an annual award for communication designers in Africa during Highway Africa conference.
“This will make newspaper and magazine designers to put more efforts in their work. The winning communication designer will be given the opportunity to work with a newspaper or magazine house for a certain period in South Africa”, he pointed out.
Togolese and South African trainers, Nahmsath Yabouri and Shalen Gajadhar respectively spoke extensively on the element of newspaper and magazine design, theory of colour and the use of graphics design to name but a few.
The communication design experts went further to give an overview of the training programme on newspaper and magazine design and the shortcomings of newspaper design in Africa. They also spoke on the use of the software such as Scribus and other important softwares.
According to a Nigerian born Eunice Ayo-Aderate, an Assistant Editor working for a Nigerian monthly newspaper, The PUNCH said the workshop was very timely. She said this is because most media outfits don’t consider the training of graphic designers as an important thing.
Based on her experienced, she went further, was that the average media outfit in Nigeria concentrates on the training of journalists such as Reporters, Columnists, Online Editors to name but a few without thinking about Graphic Designers.
“This is why graphic designers don’t raise beyong certain levels in the media industry especially in Africa”, She said.
”Graphic designers are overworked and underpaid. Training such as this is highly recommended for graphic designers to make their relevance in the media industry better appreciated”, she observed.
In his words, a media executive with lots of experiences in the media industry told participants that communication design especially in newspaper, magazine and online publications are very vital tools for designers in modern media industry.
Speaking among 30 English and French participants from different media outlets in West Africa, Mr. Bai-Bai Sesay, a born Sierra Leonean newspaper editor and also a newspaper designer told his colleagues that the workshop was very timely, interesting, entertaining and educating.
He disclosed that this is the first workshop for communication designers he had attended hoping that the organisers will continued to hold such important workshops in the near future especially in the West Africa sub region.
Most of the participants expressed thanks and appreciation to OSIWA, Penplusbytes and Highway Africa for bringing communication designers together to discuss issues relating to communication design.
The participants who attended the worshop were from Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.
It could be recalled that this was the second workshop organised by Penplusbytes. The first workshop was held in South Africa during the Highway Africa Conference.
Comments