Manuel Kostrzynski
Design as a Statement:
Why Good Design Makes Journalism More Trustworthy
Manuel studied product design, thought he’d end up creating chairs, and instead became one of Germany’s leading news designers. From shaping the digital storytelling of the Panama Papers at Süddeutsche Zeitung to co-leading the Visual Department at Tagesspiegel, he’s seen firsthand how design can change not only how stories look, but how they land. In this interview, he talks about secrecy, collaboration, and why design belongs at the core of journalism.
Interview by Thomas Weyres
Illustration by Elisabeth Moch
I met Manuel in 2018, when he moved from Süddeutsche Zeitung to Der Tagesspiegel, where I was working on the relaunch of the brand and its various editorial platforms. For many years, Manuel has been responsible for large parts of Der Tagesspiegel’s award-winning visual journalism, and since 2023 he has been co-leading the Visual Department together with Katrin Schuber.
Your career path is rather unusual – you studied industrial design, then worked for a long time at Neon magazine, later joined Süddeutsche Zeitung where you focused on digital storytelling and projects like the Panama Papers, and now you co-lead the Visual Department at Tagesspiegel together with Katrin Schuber. How did you originally get into news design?
During my industrial design studies, I had my first real encounter with graphic design while on an Erasmus semester at ECAL in Lausanne. Until then, I was convinced that I would one day make my living designing chairs and shelves.
After graduating, a short detour via BMW Golfsport led me to Neon magazine, where I started out as a classic layout designer. A monthly magazine meant a lot of creative freedom and surprisingly generous production timelines. Even at that stage, I began exploring digital formats more and more. When Neon later relocated to Hamburg, I stayed on for another year, but eventually switched to the digital design team at Süddeutsche Zeitung.
There, I was part of the development newsroom („Entwicklungsredaktion“), where digital journalism was reimagined in experimental ways. We started with monthly digital stories – initially still built on Wordpress. By the time the Panama Papers came around, it was clear that we needed our own system for complex projects. So we developed a CMS tailored to the needs of multimedia investigations – and refined it further with every major release, from the Paradise Papers to the Strache video.
That’s how I got into news design – through design itself, but always moving closer to journalism.
Screenshots from Panama Papers:
The Panama Papers, published in 2016, were an international investigative project with huge impact – and if I’m not mistaken, they even received a Pulitzer Prize. At the time, you were responsible for the project’s digital art direction at Süddeutsche Zeitung. What was it like working with the newsroom under the special conditions of strict secrecy? And what did this project mean to you personally?
When we were working on the Panama Papers, not all of us – myself included – fully realized the project’s scope and significance. In the development newsroom, we were mainly focused on finding new ways to tell stories digitally–visually, technically, journalistically. Together with the print art direction, we developed a distinct look that had to be adapted simultaneously for print, online, and social media. It was the first time I had worked so consistently across platforms – and all under absolute secrecy.
A dedicated project team was assembled: editors, designers, developers – completely cut off from the rest of the newsroom. The office doors were literally taped shut. To this day, I don’t quite understand how such a project was kept secret for months within such a large organization. But it worked.
With later projects of similar scale, of course, that secrecy was harder to maintain. Whenever a door was taped over, everyone knew: something big is happening again.
For me personally, the Panama Papers were a turning point – not because of the global impact, but because of the collaboration across disciplines. It showed me how much design can shape journalistic impact – if it is brought in early enough. And how essential it is to bring together all the professions involved in a journalistic product–editorial, design, development, product management – to work jointly and as equals.
Sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum.
Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
You began your path in editorial design and art direction at Neon – a magazine known at the time for its experimental approach, its sharp young audience, and its visual boldness, often pushing boundaries through unusual illustrations. How was the transition for you from that very creatively open environment to a publication like Süddeutsche Zeitung, with its broad readership and very different editorial positioning? Was that a big adjustment for you–or something that developed organically?
It was definitely a major adjustment. At Neon we aimed to be visually challenging–not in the sense of provocation for its own sake, but as an invitation to think along. We wanted to train and sensitize our readers visually. Artists like Sebastian Haslauer or Frank Höhne, whose work was often more difficult than decorative, regularly featured in our pages–very deliberately so.
The key advantage was the medium itself: a monthly magazine allows for more room to experiment. You have the time to negotiate, to try things out–and also to fail.
In the digital world – whether at Süddeutsche or now at Tagesspiegel – the rules are different. Visual accessibility is essential. You only have a few seconds to grab attention and provide orientation. If an image isn’t instantly understood, readers scroll on–or click away.
That said, I don’t believe design should be guided exclusively by user needs. Design shapes attitude, it defines the tone and perception of a medium. Die Zeit is a good example: neither in print nor online do they aim for visual convenience–and that’s precisely what their readership values. Because it’s consistent. And because it matches their journalistic identity.
Spreads from Neon:
From the outside, Neon often seemed to have an editorial team with a strong visual understanding – and a clear sense of the central role design plays in positioning a medium and in storytelling. Did the editorial team really have such influence on visual direction? And do you see a difference compared to more traditional news design, as is common in classic newsrooms?
I wouldn’t call it direct design influence – but there was pronounced trust. The editorial team had a deep understanding of the importance of design and consistently supported us. Around our art director, Jonas Natterer, we could simply do our work–and discuss. In the weekly EIC layout meetings at the “wall,” a lot of discussion happened about design–but always on equal footing.
Looking back, I value this greatly because I learned a lot – and I don’t always experience this in newsrooms today. At Neon, design was part of the editorial core, not an accessory. We were an equal part of the journalistic process.
In later positions, this was often a negotiation process. At Süddeutsche, this equality partly established itself through the success of investigative projects and the role of the development editorial team. The consistent stance of the print art direction was also crucial.
Fundamentally, the idea that journalistic design does not just “beautify” a text but supports, sharpens, and shapes it is still not widely established. Too often, design is seen as a downstream service–not as what it ideally is: an integral part of journalistic purpose.
At Süddeutsche Zeitung, you did a lot of work in digital visual storytelling for the German market: data-driven stories, but also strongly illustrated formats. As far as I know, you even developed a small custom CMS to implement these stories independently. Can you explain how that came about and how you worked with it?
We started experimenting with digital storytelling early – the first projects were often hard-coded, meaning built individually and not scalable. The Panama Papers were implemented with WordPress, which worked in that situation but was limiting creatively and technically.
At the same time, it quickly became clear that this format should not be reserved exclusively for large investigative stories. We wanted to create infrastructure so that the entire editorial team could tell visual stories – independent of individual cases, without starting from scratch each time.
WordPress simply wasn’t suitable for this. So in 2016 – after the Panama Papers but before the Paradise Papers – we began developing a custom CMS. The goal was to combine creative flexibility with editorial independence. The system has been continuously developed since and is still used for digital storytelling today.
It was a (successful) attempt to make good design, good technology, and good journalism permanently compatible.
How large was your team at Süddeutsche Zeitung at the time? Was there a joint visual team, where design, graphics, illustration, data journalism, and maybe development worked together – or were these areas, as in many newsrooms even today, mostly separated?
In daily work, the teams were clearly separated – design, infographics, illustration, development, editorial. This corresponded to the classic structure of many media houses at the time.
For larger projects–such as investigative investigations–we set up interdisciplinary teams. Then illustrators, infographic designers, designers, developers, and editors would sit together at one table, often literally. This kind of collaboration was not the rule, but it set standards.
Through the success of these projects, cross-department collaboration gradually became more natural – even in daily production. Structures remained formally, but the mindset became more fluid.
You moved from Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s major national newspapers, to Tagesspiegel in Berlin in 2019 – then still a significantly smaller regional paper competing with Berliner Morgenpost and Berliner Zeitung. What was the biggest difference for you when you started at Tagesspiegel compared to Süddeutsche?
Starting at Tagesspiegel felt in some ways like a small time travel. Many topics we had already tackled at Süddeutsche – digital design, storytelling formats, cross-team collaboration – were just beginning or in planning.
At the same time, shortly after I started, a comprehensive relaunch of the print product took place – a project of a scale I hadn’t experienced at Süddeutsche.
I could bring in a lot of experience and also gain new ones. Over the years, we as a team have built, further developed, and found new ways to anchor design in editorial daily life.
Tagesspiegel has developed impressively in the last five years – especially in digital storytelling and data journalism, with awards such as the Reporterpreis, the Grimme Prize, and prizes from the International News Media Association, as well as in print at the European Newspaper Award. How have you experienced this development since 2019–what has changed most in terms of content, design, and organization?
My start at Tagesspiegel coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For data journalism, this was an extraordinary period – never before had interest in data-driven stories been so high. And we felt it clearly. The Innovation Lab, from which many digital storytelling projects came, developed new formats and tools daily.
At the same time, the Innolab was initially a kind of island – with its own CMS, resources, and a certain separation from the rest of the organization. Anyone wanting to realize digital storytelling had to go through this structure.
Since then, the workflow has fundamentally changed: we have begun integrating storytelling components into the standard CMS to make them accessible to the entire editorial team. This also shifts the content focus. Digital long-form stories now come not only from data journalism but from all departments – politics, culture, society, Berlin.
There is also much movement in design. We are working to make Tagesspiegel’s visual appearance more consistent and distinctive – in print and digitally. One focus is imagery: photography but also illustration. Illustrations and collages are increasingly created directly within the Visual Department, which strengthens the visual signature of the house–both online and in print.
Front pages of Tagesspiegel:
How is your team currently organized at Tagesspiegel? How large is your team, and do you work for both digital and print? How is the team composed, and how do you collaborate with the editorial team? Do you plan stories together, and what tools do you use in daily work?
Together with Katrin Schuber, I lead the Visual Department at Tagesspiegel. All design disciplines on the editorial side are united in our team: art direction, image editing, infographics, layout, and repro. We have around 25 people in total.
Since the major Tagesspiegel relaunch–nearly three years ago – we have been shifting workflows: from the digital product to print. This logic is reflected in our structure. First, image editing and art direction handle the visual design of stories for the website. Then the content moves into print, where layout and repro take over.
We try to consider each story visually – either through image editing or art direction, e.g., for collages, illustrations, or special design solutions. Our goal is not just to illustrate but to support the story visually. Close collaboration with the editorial team is essential for this. We identify stories with potential to become major features and then develop their visual design in consultation with the editorial team.
The central tool in our daily work is the CMS CUE, which we use to produce both the website and the printed newspaper. Editors work in the CUE editor, layout uses CUE Designer for print. Image material is managed via an external but closely integrated image database.
For art direction, standard Adobe programs – especially Photoshop and Illustrator – are central.
Spreads from Tagesspiegel:
About two years ago, the entire industry began intensive discussions about the role of AI in journalism – particularly in the visual field. The central question was (and still is): Where can and should AI be used meaningfully – and where should it not? How do you handle it at Tagesspiegel? Are there clear guidelines, and what do you personally see as the biggest opportunities and risks for visual journalism with AI?
So far, we take a rather dogmatic approach to AI in design at Tagesspiegel. We do not use AI to create visual content. But what counts as AI? Is generatively expanding a background in Photoshop already AI? Probably yes. And that’s where the gray zone begins.
I am very ambivalent about AI in design. The possibilities and relief it offers are enormous. For individual elements of a collage I create, I no longer need hours of research to find the perfect object–a short prompt suffices.
On the other hand, I worked at Neon for a long time, where illustration was a central part of the visual DNA. This created a close connection to many illustrators that still exists today. I see how much this industry is under pressure – and how uncertain it is whether illustration can remain a reliable profession. In this situation, we – design-responsible teams – are also in a kind of gatekeeper role. AI radically changes design, not just aesthetically but structurally. If newsrooms start generating illustrations via prompts because it is “fast and good enough,” the whole process of visual storytelling is questioned. Design becomes secondary.
The industry needs time to learn how AI can be integrated meaningfully– not as a replacement, but as a tool. Something that complements design work, expands it, and ideally takes it to a new level.
We need to take that time – and actively shape it.
Another risk lies in audience perception. Credibility is – if not the – central asset in journalism today. AI use shakes that. Even if only a small part of a design uses AI, many feel something is “not real.” This damages trust. Technical details are hard to communicate transparently–skepticism remains. And that is not the feeling we want design to evoke.
Many media houses worldwide are currently discussing stronger automation in print production, especially in daily newspapers. In many newsrooms, resources are being shifted from print to make production more efficient, particularly given declining circulation. At the same time, we see weekly newspapers like Die Zeit, with strong visual language and high design effort, remain stable or even grow. How do you see print’s role in this tension – particularly for daily newspapers? And what future do you see for print in journalism?
Automation in print production is an important step to free resources elsewhere in media houses and ensure economic stability. At the same time, it is crucial not to lose sight of quality and design standards in print products. In a time when trust in reliable, high-quality sources is increasingly important, print media could experience a renaissance. Daily newspapers must continue to invest in a high-quality product in visual design and content to maintain relevance.
Which story from the past months has impressed you the most and why?
What has impressed me in recent months is less a single story than a journalistic approach. Die Zeit now consistently publishes selected topics in two different narrative languages – depending on the audience.
Online, these investigations appear as detailed, often data-driven features for readers willing to spend time diving deep and understanding complex contexts.
In parallel, the video team translates the same content into short, pointed formats for the homepage and social media. The tone is different, the pace faster, the delivery more direct – but the content line remains.
I find this approach remarkable because it shows that journalistic depth and mass accessibility are not mutually exclusive. The goal is not to simplify content, but to adapt it to the appropriate format for each context.
Which story from your own team has impressed you the most in recent years?
In recent years, I have been particularly impressed by projects created in collaboration with the Tagesspiegel Innovation Lab. One of the most striking was the investigation into European arms manufacturers – executed together with Jan Böhmermann’s team. Both content-wise and visually, it was an outstanding piece of investigative journalism.
At the same time, I am impressed by how consistently we have integrated digital storytelling into daily editorial work. Almost daily, new formats now emerge directly in the standard CMS. The design and technical assets needed are developed internally at remarkable speed.
European weapons–american victims: Screenshots. Read the story here
Follow Manuel on Instagram: @diskomanni