Design thread

Boy Rusty, I bet the pressroom was loving you that night! Reverse type is a really tricky thing to get down, or at least it has been for me. The orange probably doesn't add enough to the package to justify it -- you could have done a frame around it and left it black-on-white and it still would have been fine.

I do really dig the headline. Wonder how many people got it?

 

I'm saddened by the fact this thread got relegated to an area where few people tread anymore. It used to be one of my favorite places, but now it's an afterthought.

 

I agree with you. I was looking at the package on sportsdesigner.com and I was thinking the CP always stood out like a sore thumb. They're obviously creative and colourful, but they don't seem to fit the rest of the package - it's almost like an ad or a design feature strictly for the sake of a design feature.

The few pages he had which were ordinary fronts with the Sabres' lead and no special packages looked okay to me though.

 

If you want a personal critique of some of these pages, I am starting a design critique on another thread to get people sharing ideas, etc.

thanks

 

Here's tonight's NCAA centerpiece. I had all sorts of crazy ideas, but was limited by art, so I decided to keep it simple.

 

Could be just me, but there appears to be a lot of space between your headlines and your stories. I could park my car between them.

I like the CP, but those logos in the break-out boxes are pretty big. I might have scaled it down a little bit on the breakout boxes and gone a little wider on the Tennessee and VaTech stories.

Somebody smarter than me could probably answer this, but shouldn't the Jimmie Johnson cutline have been at the bottom. I was always taught that your white space should be trapped away from the page, not into it.

P.S. You can't do anything about this, but I truly think the question mark in Impact is the most hideous thing I've ever seen. I absolutely hate it.

 

I think it looks fine. My only concern is the use of reverse type over black. Personally, I try not to use reverse type unless it is a sufficiently big story, and in my opinion, the announcing of NCAA Tourney brackets doesnt qualify. I think it would have looked just as good with black text on a white background. But overall, I think it is a fine page.

 

Finally had plenty of art, so I went wild. The background didn't translate well from the PDF conversion, but it's a bunch of UVa. fans cheering at Friday night's game, run at 15-percent opacity. It did translate into print. Does it work, or is it too busy?

 

Personally, I think it's a bit too busy. But it certainly isn't far off.

My suggestions, for what they're worth (which likely isn't much): I would get rid of the Virginia cutout of player No. 2. He seems smaller than the others, and he's kinda hidden behind the guy that I assume is a coach or something. Among the other three player cutouts, I would have placed the one in the center a little higher than the other two, making him the central figure of the piece. Maybe made him a little bigger than the others, too, while maybe making the coach a bit smaller.

I think that would address what I view as my biggest concern -- that none of those cutouts is dominant. My eye kinda bounces around them all, not really drawn to any lead. I think eliminating player No. 2, shrinking the coach a bit and making the player in the center bigger and higher up would solve that.

But like I said, I'm no Vince Chiaramonte, so take it for what it's worth.

 

OK, busy night for me (laid out 11 pages). But our photographer made my job really easy on the front page with his shot. This is my first attempt at a photo cover. What do you think?

 

Going through this thread makes me even angrier that i work at a tab.