Dressing up the Agate page

I'm curious what other papers have done with the agate page? Are agate pages even worth doing anymore? How have they been 'dressed up' or redesigned?

need some ideas

 

You can always use a briefs column down one side and put one or two head shots to break up the gray.

Another way is to strip a story with art (mug or small photo) across the top.

 

Lucky to have much of it these days. Usually have a couple of jumps on the agate page, as well as a small story. Sometimes run MLB Capsules on the page.

 

what are the feelings on using blog/web/video teases? And I've seen some papers that use different stuff like 'Thumbs up/Thumbs down,' quote of the day and other tidbit type stuff.

 

Depending on how many columns you run, you could always do a stand-alone photo somewhere. We used to run them at one of my stops. Sometimes they were submitted photos; sometimes we would just look for a cool-looking wire photo to run (usually from a fringe sport like soccer or water polo).

 

I'm a big fan of standalone photos to break up large amounts of agate, like mlb boxscores or NFL linescores. But I understand that an agate page is usually the last thing a designer works on, so the use of a brief rail on that page works well from a predetermined space aspect, and I am also a big fan of formatting the TV/radio listings in a shaded box in a set spot on the page to break up the agate. Maybe even throw in a cartoon in a set spot, like in the bleachers. Any of these, by themselves, only helps a little, but if you have all three, that helps a lot. And if those things are formatted in, then it makes it easier to design around.

 

My space is at a premium and I haven't been willing to sacrifice content for asthetics. An agate page is like the stocks page in the business section: lots of valuable information for those willing to take the time to read it. Hell, our agate even runs in 8 pt.

But to the original question, we often run agate "packages". For example, we have a Class A minor league baseball team. Once a week, we run the individual player stats as well as the league leaders in different categories. Same thing for high school football, junior hockey, etc. So that breaks up the monotony of day-to-day stuff.

 

we're got a cartoon on ours. It's not half bad.

I would like to put something else on it (short column/something), but right now, it's all we can do to get the paper out without adding anything extra.

 

Sometimes we use breakouts on the agate page. Ideally, something that goes with the agate anyway. For instance, once a week we try to run Sprint Cup standings, and making that into a breakout with some text is great, especially if we don't have room for a story on that particular item.

 

At my old job, we had a five-game schedule for all of the pro/college teams of local interest, with logos. We also did a reverse font on the category headers to break up all the gray in the middle. Made for a bold look. It's probably the best agate page I've seen.

The place I am now, our agate is the pits. Can't really do much with it either, because we're a hub and cranking out five pages a night.

 

i might be a bit simplistic but how bout the ads for the nudie bars.

 

I can't remember which paper it was, but I've got some copies of one of the London newspaper's sports section in my desk at work, and they do their agate better than anyone I've ever seen. It actually makes for visually compelling pages. If it's done right, these don't have to be throwaway pages. I've wanted to redo our agate for a few years now, but haven't had time to devote to a full redesign of it. We changed the fonts, but otherwise generally kept the same look.