Rich Boudet is the the perfect combination of a writer, photographer and designer. Passionate for Sport, in 2004 he launched the www.sportdesigner.com  that became a success and a reference for designing sports pages. He also served as Web editor for Society for News Design online in 2006. Now we discovered Rich’ second love…  

You really love sports? And what are your favorite sports?

Baseball and American football are my favorites. I'm actually going to see Chelsea play the Seattle Sounders this weekend and that will be my first pro soccer game to see in years. Soccer has been hugely popular in Seattle this year.

After Sport, what’s your second love?

I go to the movies every Monday. I just saw Bruno, but my favorites are the scifi movies. Star Trek was great. I also love cars. I have a bright orange 350Z and an old Jeep. I am pondering whether to get a 370Z in the next few months. We'll see.

What is the advice you can give for a sport page designer?

Sport is such a great blend of features and news. Be creative but make sure your ideas come from the subject or story, such as thinking of smart charts you can add. Also, learn to make a good page without shadows or photoshop or custom fonts. Good typography is always where you start and end. The other tricks are easily screwed up.

What newspaper in the world in your opinion has a great Sport section? (Design and editing/writing)

Actually, Gulf News is quite good! And The National. Most American papers have very thin sports sections these days. Their web sites are often more interesting, except for the bigger Sunday sections. We have some excellent writers where I work at The Seattle Times and I'm very proud of our work overall.

You have experience, both in printing and online. What do you prefer?

I would not call online design fun. It's challenging and frustrating many times. Also, most news organizations do not want to spend time designing online. That's a shame.
Print remains the better place for constant creativity but I think that will change over the next five years in America. Print will be more templated. We'll focus on designing the print products that remain very profitable, or finding new places to use our talents. It's a challenging time in the news media.