Stripdagen Haarlem – The Newspaper

During the most recent edition of Stripdagen Haarlem, Drawing the Times’ Eva Hilhorst and Getekend Verslag (Drawn Report)’s Menah Wellen organised an event where we combined graphic journalism and visual note-taking. The theme of Stripdagen Haarlem this year was “critical observation,” which is exactly what a graphic journalist does. A graphic journalist needs to decide what it is exactly that they want to convey and how to do that. The same applies to a visual note-taker: they create a visual interpretation of everything that’s said during a conference or event—what to show, what to leave out, and, more importantly, how to present it?

Menah Wellen works as a visual reporter. Because one has to practice what they preach—do what you want others to do—Menah documented the events in the Koepel on her iPad. This was shown live on a large screen.

Meanwhile, the editorial team at Drawing the Times had once again set up a newsroom in the Koepel, where a small newspaper was drawn and printed live. Erwin Blok, the “Gestetner king,” had been flown in especially for the occasion.

With five stencil machines—allowing for five-color printing—he filled the room with a wonderfully nostalgic scent of printing ink. A few decades ago, the Gestetner stencil machine could be found in many schools, where it was used to print the school magazine. Those were usually printed in black and white only. Erwin Blok gets the most out of the machine and can do things with it that a modern Riso machine cannot achieve: mixing colors, for example. Speaking of Riso: Maia Matches, who has designed and printed many a Riso print, created the newspaper’s cover. And then there were stories that needed to be drawn on paper, scanned and printed in up to five layers of color.

The platform Drawing the Times was initially founded to promote the many forms and diversity of illustrated journalistic stories. Thanks to the internet, Drawing the Times has a global reach. There are also downsides to reading comics online: the stories remain behind the glass screen of a smartphone or computer. Most people agree on this: ideally, you’d read a comic or illustrated story on paper.

The aim of Drawing the Times is to focus on current events—not so much on the latest news, but on the background and context of the news. We love to share personal stories and testimonies. These illustrated stories allow the reader to step into the narrator’s shoes, experiencing the events through their eyes and the artist’s drawing hand. Because illustrated stories are so tangible, it’s also nice to not only read them on a screen or on paper, but also to see the artist at work or to try drawing a story yourself. Drawing allows you to visualize what’s going on in your head.

This year, the people of Drawing the Times wanted to create a real paper newspaper during the Stripdagen Haarlem. We’ve noticed that fewer and fewer people—especially young people—read a paper newspaper, so we decided to print a newspaper on-site. Visitors were invited to draw themselves—or have one of our artists draw a story for them—whatever they’d like to see in the newspaper.

Merel Barends likes to tell stories from an animal’s perspective and made a story about a crow. There were other stories by and about animals. Because animals cannot communicate in the language humans use, relatively few animal stories appear in regular newspapers.

Other topics that came up included concerns about the so-called ceasefire in Gaza and the lack of compassion among politicians. Gaza has mostly disappeared from the front pages, but it became clear that many people find what is happening there unbearable.

On Saturday afternoon, Eva Hilhorst, Menah Wellen and Ageeth van der Veen had a panel discussion with moderator Melanie Kranenburg about live drawing and graphic journalism. We talked about the similarities and the differences and we all agreed that drawing can make events memorable, personal, interactive and fun. Another aspect of hiring an illustrator to make a dram report of an event or make a drawn article about a topic that needs more research is that it helps seeing things from a different perspective, or from multiple perspectives.

And again, to practice what we preach, we asked Theresa Hartgers to make visual notes during the panel discussion.

On Sunday visitors of the newsroom were invited to draw a poster of something they find important. Whatever you pay attention to will grow. This resulted in a growing exhibition in the newsroom

By the end of the Stripdagen, the newspaper was ready, and people were invited to take a copy home for free.