During the seventies, the physical size of the paper increased once again and editors began to play with visual effects, such as using different fonts for page headings, using drawings and placing more emphasis on photos.

The Real World was added as wire releases filled their own quarter-page. Comics appeared in the late seventies as well.

The eighties saw further experimentation with headings and fonts and executives created graphics to accompany articles.

Changes in Technology

Despite the numerous changes in layout, The Crimson's look was still very limited by the available technology.

Printing each issue involved a complicated and laborious process of making a rough sketch of the layout, running the stories through a machine that coated one side of the article with wax, arranging the articles on a dummy sheet and then photographing the page with a giant camera.

Production Manager Patrick R. Sorrento assisted the executives in this process, ensuring that the paper had a clean and finished look.

In the fall of 1991, a new computer system gave The Crimson Quark XPress and Imagesetter capacity, enabling the editors to lay out the paper on computers.

The transition between systems was far from smooth, however. The old headline and text fonts did not translate well to the new systems, says former Crimson president Julian E. Barnes '93. "Instead, it just looked like...a parody of The Crimson," he says.

Designers Take the Helm

With the new technology came a call for a staff assigned to work solely on design. A design board was officially created in early 1991, taking over and dramatically changing the design of the paper.

"We had no design board before because our expectations of design were so low," says Joseph R. Palmore '91, managing editor in 1991.

These expectations changed under Design Editor Dante E A.. Ramos Jr. '93. Along with Associate Business Manager Michael A. Schoen '93 and designers Nancy E. Greene '95 and James Cham '95, Ramos reworked and computerized the design of the paper.

"Not a lot of explicit design had gone on before because technically, there were a lot of limits on what you could do," Ramos says.

The designers spent fall of 1991 working with and learning about the computer system.