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You can fool yourself, if you want.
But you can't fool your readers.
They can tell when your
Please. Do me a favor. Don’t even go there.
Don’t even think of telling me that design is important at your newspaper—not when one glance tells me that your design is an afterthought (and that may be putting it nicely).
During my career as a consultant, I’ve been told time and again how much design matters at such-and-such newspaper. When I get the chance to look at that paper, I discover that the publisher who told me that is either fooling himself or has entered an advanced state of visual brain-death.
Whatever the reason, that publisher is not seeing some severe design problems.
Let me help. Before you tell me design counts at your paper, look for some of the following design concerns. If you have any of them—any—the importance of design at your place is questionable.
Here’s a Dirty Dozen:
1. Gratuitous use of color. Yeah, you’ve got color—and you’re gonna use it wherever and whenever you can. Why? ‘Cause you’ve got color.
2. Graduated screens. As long as you have color, you might as well experiment with all the bizarre ways you can use it. Graduated screens are especially good for this.
3. Tint blocks. You want to call attention to a particular story or element on a page. But you didn’t plan well enough for art or a photo to accompany that story. So you’ll use a color tint block to do the trick. No matter that readers struggle to read through a tint.
4. Heavy rules. These are especially useful in black when you want to give your newspaper a funereal look—or if you want to box that tint block (see No. 3 above) with some gratuitous color (see No. 1 above).
5. Poor text typography. Your reporters don’t know how to write tight. Your editors just go through the motions. So you run your text type teeny-tiny so those writers and editors can combine their best efforts to create longer and boring-er stories. Readers tell you that they struggle to read your newspaper. But they just don’t get it, do they? It’s more important for us to write than it is for them to read. Well...isn’t it?
6. Poor headline hierarchy. Let’s be sure the page editor has enough space to tell the story—even if your lead story is topped with a one-line, four-column 30-point headline. We wouldn’t want the editor to have to think too hard. He might whine.
7. Clutter. Let’s cram everything into the page that will fit. No attention to structure. No attention to making selected elements stand out. Negative space? Nope.
8. Poor spacing. A story in a box has a pica of space between the box and the copy at top, 9 points at the bottom, 6 points on the left and 3 points on the right. OK. Close enough.
9. Few or no graphics. When we do a story about road repairs, we run the detour directions within the text of the story. No map. That might take some planning.
10. Tiny photos. Let’s get in all of the type. All....of....it. Those stories are important—that’s what people want to read, even if it’s in a typeface that’s too small (see No. 5 above). The photo? Oh yeah, the photo. OK. We’ll put that in once we get the stories all in the page.
11. Lack of modular design. Why plan the page? Your stories are so important—and written in such compelling fashion—that readers will follow that doglegged type anywhere on the page. Right. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn...
12. Inconsistent design elements. It’s OK to have different standing heads in your sports section because that’s the way your sports editor wants it. And, after all, it is his section. No matter that those standing heads and other label elements bear no resemblance to those elements in other parts of the paper. We want your sports editor to be happy—even if your readers are confused.
One thing your reader won’t be confused about: design just doesn’t matter at your place. And if you think your reader isn’t smart enough to know the difference between a newspaper that’s well-designed and one that’s not, you’re just kidding yourself.
But please, don’t try to kid me—or your readers.
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