How Arguing with my Boss Revealed my Synesthesia

Twenty years ago at a New York City tabloid, there was no way to explain that words have colors.

When I started my career back in the ’90s, my job — designing pages for newspapers — involved creating interesting arrangements of pictures and words that would hook readers.

At the New York Daily News, I worked on the News desk with a team of 12 men responsible for designing the pages in the front of the paper, including page one. We produced hard news, and it was a genuinely exciting time to be working at a New York City tabloid.

My job was to get more people to read news stories. That meant making things look better, more digestible, more interesting and more visual… in black and white. The Daily News did have some color pages, but those were saved for ads or features, and I worked in News.

Black & white and read all over

Getting the headline right at a New York City tabloid was no trivial matter. Headlines sold newspapers and this was a newspaper at war, not just on breaking news but on the strength of the front page headline. Would it be the right tone? Was it accurate and witty? And ultimately, would it be better than what would be on Page 1 of the New York Post?