A little help from my friends ...

One of the beautiful things about working in a design studio is the ability to share content, whether it's text, photos, ideas, etc. Today, like many other hard news days we've gone through at the studio, a big story broke about President Barack Obama's new gun plan, and we decided to share some of that content. It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not -- the gun plan is still big news. And I happened to be on the only Heartland Team paper that decided to go super big with it: The Baxter Bulletin from Mountain Home, Ark.

Jan. 17, 2013, Baxter Bulletin 1A

The gun illustration was designed by Mark Marturello, the in-house illustrator for the Des Moines Register. He created a vertical and a horizontal version for the newspapers in the studio to use as they will. I ended up extending the black box at the bottom to incorporate a local story from Baxter about local officer funding, and I stuck a bits-and-pieces glance of the bills in the blank space created by the gun. I'm sure there will be at least five papers tomorrow that look similar, but I'm still proud of what I did. And the people in Mountain Home will think it's unique to them!

I will post other versions of the graphic used on 1As after I track them down (and who designed them, of course.)