Design thread .... v.2

Alright, here's our All-County football story highlighting one of the state's best players, who broke at least 8-10 state records this season, including rushing touchdowns (48) and rushing yards at around 3,800 yards, most yards in a game (404) and most touchdowns in a playoff game (8), etc.

 

Simple, to the point. I like it.

One minor thing, though. Try to make sure your masthead isn't larger in point size than your main hed.

 

solid point, doc.

 

Any interest in bringing this thread back? I know we don't get a lot of movement over here on the Design sub-board, but I always thought this was one of the best threads on the site. It's great to get feedback from other page designers and see what other people are doing at papers large and small. If anyone here is interested, I can try to post some pages this week.

 

hell, i enjoy stopping by and agreeing with doc. hell, i've looked at his work ... i'm good with agreeing with him.

 

I'm always up for a good helmet trade design discussion.

 

These pages are inspirational, but to be frank, seem kind of out of my league.

We're a 6-day PM, and in three hours, just two of us have to clear the wire, edit the local copy and then sit down and put 2-4 pages out (and that's if the phone doesn't ring for local briefs that come in late-it always does). (Typically in at 6:30 with a 9:15 deadline for our last page, Friday nights are even worse, as often times we get back from a game, write up the gamer, and then have to lay out all our pages by 12:15). We use as many entry points as we can, but any serious artistic stuff, like the cutouts or the intricate local graphics must either be done way in advance or are simply impossible.

My boss, an old-schooler among old-schoolers, routinely bashes the 20-something editor of one of our sister papers, who though in the same boat as us, often runs the "Big Bad Photo" across the middle as appears in many of these examples. For example, if the "Big Bad Photo" is of a basketball player, he will almost always complain that it should have been cropped at the waist, as running the photo all the way down to the feet is a waste of space where another story can be put in.

Furthermore, our style (5-column front with a mandatory left rail, and a very limited selection of headline fonts) basically dictates a severely limited number of design options. One of these days I'll try and get an example up for you guys to tear apart.

Back to the point, a lot of these designs are great, but can anyone offer a few quick and easy pointers for a relative newbie and part-time designer with no time, few resources and no wiggle room in style or supervision?

(Probably easier to part the Red Sea, I know, but every little bit helps.)

 

Ummm ... can you be more specific?

 

I'll try...what are your go-to tactics if you're trying to dress up an ordinary gamer above and beyond pull-quotes or an "at a glance" summary? Especially if you're in a pinch?

What are some of the rules you live by when you're laying out pages (the "Five Rules" thing way back in the thread was helpful)?

When you look at smaller papers, what kinds of common mistakes do you see?

I know that's probably not specific enough, but it's late, and I'm tired.

 

1. Create a centerpiece "feel" with white space around the big package. One pica of space all the way around it that wouldn't otherwise be there.

It will be time-consuming to think it out the first time you do it. But it's like copy-and-paste after that. It will become second nature.

2. If you're not getting the latitude to go with the "Big Bad Photo," get a strongly shaped piece of art. A deep vertical or a wide horizontal. That'll stand out. And, of course, make sure the news dictates what you're doing. Don't use that art just for the sake of using the art.

 

1. Breakouts. Find the most interesting breakout possible.

2. Regarding the rules: Keep it clean. Make sure you have a reason for doing everything you do. Don't use a colored hed or a cutout just because you can. Give the reader as much info as possible. Scorelines, informative subheds, breakouts, etc. Don't just write an AP version of a cutline. Try to have your cutline say something, if possible. Learn to embrace white space. It's your friend. And, above all, keep it simple.

3. Grey pages. Clutter. Not enough art. Bad, cliched heds, or long, rambling heds. Plus, a lot of the things I mentioned in point 2, e.g. cutouts, multicolored heds, pointless effects that seem like someone just learned how to do them that day.

Hope that helps.