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The Art of Dose
It was an ambitious experiment for a mainstream media company: create a free, five-city daily newspaper that felt more like a slim alt-weekly, with a little tabloid thrown in. Launched on April 4, 2005 and shuttered last May, Dose was known for its usually striking cover art, often created by local illustrators and photographers in conjunction with the in-house art department.
Dose was started as a multimedia brand, combining print, mobile and online properties (the online component is still thriving). The print portion—labeled as a magazine despite being on newsprint—enjoyed about 331,000 daily readers by the time it was shut down by parent company CanWest, owners of the National Post and eleven other traditional newspapers across Canada.
We liked how Dose put an emphasis on the visual arts community, so we tracked-down former Editor-In-Chief Pema Hegan to tell us about the creative process behind Dose‘s 270 cover designs.
One of the most striking things about Dose was its cover. Why did you choose to go in this direction rather than featuring full stories on the front page like other dailies?
We believed the cover was our single biggest opportunity to introduce new readers to Dose. It needed to reach out to people walking past the box, and that is hard to do with a busy front page full of stories. We thought the best approach was to focus on a single issue/idea and find a smart and visually interesting way to communicate it. The Esquire covers that George Lois created in the 1960s were a big inspiration.
What was the creative process for deciding on a cover?
We would come up with a few ideas in the morning news meeting and at noon, the editors and art department would huddle up to answer three questions:
1. What are people talking about or could they be talking about today?
2. What one simple idea do we want to communicate about this subject?
3. How can we visually express this idea in the most simple, powerful way?
Sometimes the meetings were a fun fifteen minutes and sometimes they were a difficult hour. After the meeting, the designers, editors, photographers and illustrators had seven hours to execute the idea and create the cover. I was constantly amazed by what a great job they did in such a short time.
Are there some memorable covers that you had to pull together at the eleventh hour?
The London underground bombing on July 7, 2005 sticks in my mind. Early on we made a decision go beyond just reporting the news and try to paint a picture of what it felt like to be a young person in London on that day—the confusion and fear. At lunchtime, our editors and reporters called everyone we knew in London and asked them to capture the feeling in their city with words and photos. As we waited for the material to come in, we worried if it would come together, but by the end of the day we managed to publish an issue full of cell phone photos and first-person stories that I think set Dose apart from other coverage.
Were there any covers you agonized over or couldn’t decide on?
We had an amazing cover planned for our launch issue…and then the Pope died. We had to rethink our strategy and create a new cover in 48 hours. We had more than fifty options pinned to the wall before making an agonizing decision on which direction to take. The first time is always the hardest. I still have nightmares about that day.
Did you ever run into controversy with any of your covers?
I once had a telephone death threat for a cover about the re-branding of Canada. We had illustrated a beaver being impaled by a flagpole. A bit brutal, I know, but we wanted to express the idea of getting rid of the clichéed icons Canada is know for around the world and replace them with something new and interesting like the music, art and design being created here. The chap called from his office and forgot to hide his number. I called him back to explain why I thought impaling a beaver had been a good way to tell the story and he was very embarrassed.
Did your corporate parent CanWest ever have a say in what would go on the cover?
No. We had nothing but compliments from the high-ups at CanWest.
Were there particular covers that instigated a lot of reader feedback?
Because of our covers we got calls and emails accusing us of being left wing, right wing, homophobic, gay propagandists, prudes, sex-obsessed, blasphemers and church promoters—sometimes all in the same week. The objective of the covers was to get people thinking and talking. We certainly achieved that!
Do you have a favourite cover?
The team did a great job on covers leading up to the 2006 election—definitely some of my favourites. I think they presented politics in a fresh and sometimes surprising way. Voter turnout in 2006 was up almost 5% for voters under 25. Maybe the Dose take on politics helped contributed to that? [According to an Ipsos-Reid readership poll conducted on behalf of CanWest, Dose reached almost one-in-ten 18 to 24-year-olds daily. —Ed.]
What was the reason given for shuttering Dose?
The press release from CanWest said, “we feel the printed publication will not produce the financial results we expect over the long term.”
Describe the day of the announcement, and what that was like for you and the staff.
The president of CanWest came down to our open-plan newsroom and delivered the news. About sixty people lost their jobs that day. It was obviously very sad. We were all so proud of what we had achieved at Dose that the sadness didn’t last too long—by 9 p.m. we were at Squirly’s having a drink.
What are the staff doing these days?
The staff were some of the most talented people I have ever met and, almost without fail, they are doing great things. Some moved to Canadian media companies—The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Maclean’s, MTV, Much Music—and some left the country to work for organizations like Creativity magazine and the BBC.
Where have you moved on to now?
The ex-publisher of Dose [Noah Godfrey] and I are building GigPark; a website to help people share recommendations with their friends.
As a New Zealander transplanted three years ago to Canada, what’s your take on our media in comparison?
Media is changing so fast. Most of the people reading Torontoist now probably create almost as much “media” as they consume. Because of this, I think the biggest difference between “media” in Canada and New Zealand isn’t anything the TV channels or newspapers are doing; it’s the difference in broadband penetration—8% in New Zealand compared to 22% here. New Zealand has a connection problem that needs to be fixed.
What have you discovered about Toronto that you didn’t expect?
The creative community. I think it rivals London, where I lived for three years. I love this city.
Images: CanWest MediaWorks