Design thread

I like that a lot. How did your photographer feel about you running text and stuff over his picture? Ours get angry when we do anything but run their photos as submitted, to the point that I've been chewed out several times for making cutouts or running text over them like you did.

But I like it.

 

Thoughts:

* I don't have a problem with putting copy on text, if it doesn't interfere with the focal point of the photo. Problem is, your subhed (or whatever it's called since it's before the hed) gets lost in there because it's too small to stand out against a busy backdrop. Hed is fine, though I'm not a big fan of the bang -- it would have worked without the mark and centered, but that's just me.

* Photo's great. It makes him look like he's doing the septuple head spin from that Futurama episode where Fry looks for his seven-leaf clover. Nice trick. The text to the right is a bit much -- center the photo, run a two-to-three inch horizontal block along the bottom, mayhaps? But then you run the risk of losing the car.

* How did this print? Were the presses your way able to replicate it well?

* Slightly off-topic: I assume there's more gutter space than I'm seeing, right? I noticed it with the flag -- I gather it doesn't actually touch the edge of the page.

 

Yeah, it reproduced perfectly. It damned well should have since our company is fond of pointing out often that they've spent $22 million on the new presses (neglecting to mention that it's used, and the computer system that came with it sucks; but I digress).

And yeah, there is a gutter. The way InDesign likes to PDF these things, there just isn't one on the computer copy.

 

I saw something similar to this done in Atlanta.

The main headline reads: Blowout or Poor Sportsmanship: Where Is The Dividing Line?

 

started a new gig on the news side.. I know this is a sports journalist forum, but any critiques would be nice, anyway...

 

solid pages, not real fancy, but i'll take un-fancy over someone that tries too hard and misses.

Right now start working on getting more air/white space into your pages when you can. Example: when you have your quote boxes, get like two picas of space between the top of the box and the copy.

I think simple things like that can really make a page look better.

 

yep, thanks for the comments.. and yeah.. i just started this gig 3 weeks ago, and don't wanna start with the fancy stuff until i'm more familiar with the paper's "style" and what i can and cannot do.... but i agree with the space....

 

Today's Local Front -- Easter photo page. Nothing special I know... But if anyone could give me any ideas on what I could have done better or maybe switched around it would be appreciated.

 

I hate ... HATE ... when cutlines but against each other. I'm not a big fan of shared cutlines either, but I think it looks better than slamming two identical cutlines next to each other. Just a pet peeve, I guess.

The rest of the page is pretty solid. I like the colors and use of the photos. Maybe a little too symmetrical and boxy for me, which is why I probably would have run the fire hydrant photo all the way to the bottom of the page and then shared the cutline.

 

The "School leader set to retire" story ruins this page for me. For starters, your pull quote is WAAAAAYYYYYY too long. Also, it's too wide and creates a really ugly series of breaks in the story to the right of the quote. I try to never, ever have a pull quote or mug shot be more than 1/2 the width of the column because it causes hideous line breaks like the ones above. The news designers at my rag do this shit all the time and it drives me crazy.

The rest of the page is solid, if unspectacular. The centerpiece is a little bland, but I like the use of drop caps and oversized text. The top story is interesting because I almost never use a person's name in a headline, and I definitely never use both a first and last name. And it should read: "Dave Higgins interested in Amores' seat"

 

Dude ... photo, bottom right. Is that Jon Benet Ramsey?