Learning page design

When we were a slot/rim operation and I was working slot, I always had in the back of my mind, what would I do if a section-front story broke. I'd figure out the chain reaction and was able to do it fast if it happened late.

 

Sheesh ... I spend every Friday afternoon during football and basketball season designing my front page with holes for that night's game(s).

There has been a time or two when I liked a photo so much that I reset (usually because the pic was vertical rather than horizontal), but still had no trouble adjusting.

 

Here's a question I've wondered for a while. How often do you use kickers?

We use them with every headline, but I feel like it's overkill.

 

This. Always have a "Plan B" in the back of your head, and know which stories HAVE to stay out front, which ones can get pushed inside, and which ones can get punted entirely if necessary. One of the reasons, if at all possible, I've always liked to budget a non-local story with local interest (like one on State. U) for the front. If something happened, I didn't feel bad about moving it.

 

This is a really good question. I didn't fully understand how useful kickers are until after I was on the desk for awhile.

We use them on almost everything. From a designer's perspective, they are good for a couple of things. For one, they tend to add white space that you might not otherwise design in, which usually makes for more pleasing pages.

Second, depending on your paper's kicker style, they can give you much more freedom when writing heds. With game stories, if you have the final score or the local team's name in the kicker, that means you don't have to write it into the headline every time – which gets tedious. Even if you just have very simple kickers like "NBA" then it saves you from having to specify "NBA Finals" or "NBA Draft" in the hed.

 

Yeah, we use them quite a bit. We have a couple of options, and we run a scoreline/up next combo with every major sport, then sports-specific labels with most stories inside. And we have page banners for things such as MLB for when we have an open page.

 

Unless it's the deciding game of the season, there's no reason to use a scoreline as a label.

 

Why? As I said, we use it more for the up next aspect to get the time/TV out front.

 

While you can't have the actual story in hand until close to deadline, you still know you're going to put that game in the paper, and you can design the page knowing you should get that story in time.

There are always exceptions, but in general I think (hope) that's the point he meant to get across.

 

I don't know. He was pretty specific.

He constructed a flow chart on designing a page. The second or third step, if I remember right, was, "Do you have all your page elements in hand?" If you answered no, the next step was, "Wait until you have your elements."

 

I was hoping today would be the day. However, after I set them up, my higher-up basically went through and changed most of it. So it doesn't even feel like my layout. Maybe next time...

 

Not to step on anyone's toes, but your "higher up" sounds like a control freak.

If he/she has you make the changes, you learn more quickly how to design pages.

If he/she changes the page after you're finished, it only teaches you to lack confidence.

A good supervisor teaches. A bad supervisor tells you to get out of the way and let him/her do it.