BROOKINGS — National Newspaper Week is Oct. 6-12 — this year’s theme is “Telling Our Stories,” and Brookings resident Sandy DeBeer has a story to tell that ends happily-ever-after. DeBeer, the advertising placement and public notice coordinator at the South Dakota NewsMedia Association, is the winner of a competition to design the logo for this year’s nationwide celebration.

“Telling our stories — it’s our week to like express how important that is. Toot our own horn kind of thing. I mean we have the platform to do it, so that’s what it means to me — taking advantage of that and getting our stories and our importance out there to people,” DeBeer said.

The journalistic insignia she crafted expresses that theme with elegant simplicity that impressed the judges at the Kansas Press Association who selected her submission as the winning design.

“(I was) just interpreting that as like simple as possible and as clean-lined as possible — just knowing how it gets used across all sorts of newspapers, and print and online,” DeBeer said. “I mean, telling our stories — you’re reading our stories either in a physical paper or on a page on a website, and I think the most iconic or most symbolic way to see that is to open a newspaper. So I wanted that incorporated.”

DeBeer’s own story began with an early passion for the visual arts.

“In high school, I took like every art class I could. And then I think it was East Central Multi-District — they had like a business course and you had the option to job shadow. And I chose working at the Brookings Register,” DeBeer said. “They had me making like the ‘happy ads’ for an hour or however often we were there — for like a semester or something. So I made all the birthday and anniversary ads back then.”

From that point on, her life has been defined by the dual motifs of art and journalism. 

“I did go to Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Canby — and that would’ve been in like the fall of 2000 I suppose. So I do have a two-year degree from there in graphic design,” DeBeer said. “From there, I went to the Kerkhoven Banner in Kerkhoven, Minn. for four years and worked for that newspaper — mostly as a graphic designer, but at like any newspaper, you end up being a jack-of-all-trades and learning everything.”

While in Minnesota, she began earning recognition for her graphic design work.

“I’ve won like the Better Newspaper Contest awards in Minnesota,” DeBeer said. “I’ve won four there for graphic design.”

After that, she circled back home to Brookings and a position at the South Dakota NewsMedia Association, where she’s now celebrating 18 years on the job.

“I came back home to Brookings, because I’m originally from here,” DeBeer said. 

“I don’t remember who said it to me, but it was like — once you start in the newspaper industry, it gets in your blood and then you end up being a lifer. And I guess that’s very much true.”

She said illustrating the theme of National Newspaper Week proved to be a straightforward task.

“The elements kind of came together at once,” DeBeer said. “The only thing that I did variation-wise was I did mess with a few different colors. I had it in blue, and then I tried to do a version with like CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) — you know the printing process colors? And that just kind of got way too busy. And our SDNA gold is a color that I use a lot — because it’s our own main color — so I did kind of want a variation of that.”

The orange-and-gold emblem she submitted proved to be a winner and will be featured this week in papers across the country as the Newspaper Association Managers organization celebrates the 84th observance of National Newspaper Week.

“So far, I mean, it’s very cool to like see it being used — seeing the other state associations pushing it out to their members,” DeBeer said. “It’s really our week to like promote ourselves. It’s like our week to celebrate our industry — all the things we do, from advertising to covering meetings and like just the people stories and features.”

— Email Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.