Headline goes here

At my college newspaper (before I was in charge), we had an inside (tab size) page with a half-page ad at the bottom and one story taking the top half. The headline, at the extreme left end of a space going all five columns across:

24-point headline

 

I doubt this ran in print (although anything is possible). I saw it on an RSS feed that picks up headlines and turns them into Web links.

It's probably more of an issue of how copy is ported to the Web. Anybody have a system where this works exceptionally well? Many I've had experience with seem to be cobbled together.

 

Am I the only designer in the damn country that doesn't use "Put headline here" or "24-point head?"
It drawing damn boxes! Make them different sizes and appealing to the eye, then write the damn headline in the box size alloted. Even if you are a guy that just started design (like myself) you can draw a headline box and not have to fill it with something that might hang you in the end.
I'm just hoping that this doesn't mean that the designer in question has a book of designs that he goes to in a rotation, I just hope the guy is lazy this one night.
For those at larger papers, sure the copy editors should catch the problem and write the head, but for us at smaller papers the headlines given to us by the writers are sometimes just useless (either boring or completely sized to the point I can't use it in the space I have) if they are there at all. It is then MY job to write a better headline that both fits the space and gets the point across. How hard is that! You don't have to read the whole story to get enough for the jist if they are writing in the inverted-triangle method.

 

Guys, leave DyePack alone.

It's patently obvious that he desperately wants to be a designer. Probably couldn't color inside the lines as a kid and has chewed on crayons and stewed on on designers ever since.

 

Nah, those crayons taste too bad to eat for more than a few months, Aceosaurus.

But it has to be something. I mean, designers do no wrong. EVERY mistake can be traced back to those dumbshit copy editors and editors who just have no fucking clue what the readers want.

The key is to obsess about rule lines and post dollar-sized pages on Web sites and have multiple orgasms about how fabulous they look.

Yes, I'm sure that's the key to revitalizing newspapers.

 

Well, without knowing their production methods, there's really not any reason to put a dummy headline on a Web page. You're not holding a points depth or anything to facilitate the layout getting done.

 

Dye-a-per is clearly a guy no one in his newsroom will listen to, that most likely because he has no social skills whatsoever and is incapable of communicating without being (misguidedly) condescending or insulting.

He actually makes some decent points about editing, but who would want to listen to a guy like that in person? It is hard enough to stomach just reading them. I've even begun to feel sorry for the guy, so sure am I of his rather pathetic existence:
- likely divorced, if he ever found someone to marry him in the first place
- making a shitty wage
- works deep into the night, sleeps most of the day, and whose social circle consists of the drunks at his local establishment to whom he can feel superior.

 

Yeah, EE. Just keep clinging to your tired excuses. We all know designers can do no wrong, that it's just the copy editors and editors who keep fucking up the works.

We all know readers just want the pretty design, even if the readers themselves don't know or realize it.

It's a tired ploy that should have been drummed out of newsrooms long ago. It'll go down as a colossal failure if enough people in newsrooms every grasp onto a clue long enough.

 

Here's another tired ploy for you:

 

I love that. It's like two for the price of one.

And the people with dial-up connections have to love it, too.

 

I know you enjoy your own clever comebacks, but I'm not a designer.
I'm an editor that's seen my share of your kind.

 

That's nice. Yawn.

Tell me when you have something meaningful to say. The readers out there actually want a newspaper with things they want to read. Slamming me won't change that.