If the Opelika Daily News looks a little different today — and a little familiar — there is a story behind it.
I had been blogging about Opelika for several years when I decided the site deserved to look like something more than a blog. I hired Brett Darnell, then a student at Auburn University, to design it. What he came up with is the look you are seeing on this page right now: a sheet of torn paper clipped to a kraft folder, a yellow No. 2 pencil laid across a faded photograph of downtown Opelika, and the words “Join the conversation.” It felt like a small-town newsroom. It felt like Opelika.
Over the years, as the site moved through one WordPress redesign after another, that design got left behind. Themes were replaced, files were overwritten, and eventually the original was simply gone. I still thought about it.
Bringing it back with Viktor AI
This week I asked Viktor AI, the AI coworker I have been working with on the Daily News, whether that old look could be recreated on the current site. Here is roughly how it went:
- Finding the original. Viktor dug up a 2009 capture of the site in the Internet Archive and recovered Brett’s actual artwork from it — the masthead collage, the paper and woodgrain textures, the pencil.
- Showing me options. Rather than guessing, it built a few directions and put them in front of me. We landed on a “modern retro” version: the 2009 art and feel, but with today’s logo, today’s content and a layout that works on a phone.
- Getting the details right. The logo had to sit at the same angle as the paper note, and the pencil needed “Opelika Daily News” stamped along the barrel the way the original did. We went back and forth on those a few times until they looked right.
- Building it properly. The final result is a WordPress child theme, so nothing was hacked into place and the whole site was backed up before anything changed. Every story, page, menu and obituary is exactly where it was.
What used to take a designer, a developer and a few weeks took an evening of conversation.
Credit where it is due
The design is Brett Darnell’s. He is a working designer in Houston now, and I hope he does not mind seeing his college project back on the internet. Seventeen years later it still works, which says everything about how good it was in the first place. Viktor rebuilt it; Brett drew it.
A couple of things are still on the list. The masthead photograph of downtown is the one from 2009, and I would like to replace it with a current picture of Opelika aged to match. If you spot something that looks off — on your phone, your tablet or your desktop — I would like to hear about it.
Otherwise, welcome back to the old Opelika Daily News. Join the conversation.
— Jerry Katz
