 |
Thinking,
tools and tips for a better designed newspaper. Columns will be available here for a full year.
For some papers, it's easier to introduce a redesign over the course of a few issues. They're a bit concerned about reader (and advertiser reaction) and they want to give their newsroom a bit more time to juggle the redesign along with their day-to-day duties. Not a problem. Here are some tips.
When you're designing, you can't only pay attention to the numbers. Sometimes you have to step back, turn off your thinking...and see what's right in front of you.
Think of what you're working on as just a story and the odds are you'll get...just a story. But you need to offer your readers more than that.
You're just about ready to launch that redesign, but you want to test some of the items... just to be sure they're right. You can do it, without letting on—and without doing a full prototype.
If you were to go blind, could you still do page design? Well, yes...if you have a bit of help and you know the right moves.
Your newspaper is a license to print money. And it takes some design thinking and some design planning and some design elements to make it happen. Here are some ideas.
When editors are on deadline, they're working at breakneck speed—and the temptation is strong to make the job faster and easier, looking for shortcuts as they scramble to beat the clock. One of those shortcuts is to write a headline then size the headline to fill the space across the top of the package. That's a problem.
Design is a discipline, a craft, a commitment to doing the right things—in the right way. These ten tips will help you to do just that.
If your nameplate isn't clear, contemporary and compelling, it tells readers you don't really care much about your product. Why so much emphasis on the nameplate? Does it really matter that much?
"We find ourselves slipping into the old habits of filling every square inch with like-sized photos, as if the goal were to display as many faces as possible. I'm afraid that if I see one more photo feature page of this type, I will go stark raving mad."
We often pay so much attention to the elements we're placing on a page that we can lose touch with one of the elements no one sees: space. Like line space and gutter space and the space-between-elements-and-packages space.
In last month's column, Ken Blum stated the case for posed photos—one of the best pieces I've read in defense of "grip and grins" and the like. This month: feedback from Ken's readers.
This column from colleague Ken Blum is an important statement on the value of community newspaper photography. Thanks, Ken.
If we are to apply the rules of grammar, there can only be one "worst." The word is a superlative and that means there can only be one. That applies in all cases. Always. Every time. ...Except when it comes to design.
|
|
