NEWSPAPER LAYOUT AND DESIGN
Newspaper layout and design
Layout refers to a
document or written version of a plan that covers selecting, shaping and
arranging the contents of each newspaper issue. Contents include news,
advertising, features, news directories and many other items.
Design
It includes layout
arrangement and all artistic decisions related to the appearance of individual
pages.
How
important is good newspaper design?
The most important
part of selling a newspaper is its content, first, and then its design, but the
two elements are not divided fifty-fifty. People buy newspapers that carry
stories they want to read. There is considerable variance in what each person
wants to read. Children and some adults may want to read the comics, but with
different priorities. Children may want only comics, but adults usually want
something more, including news, sports scores, sports stories, stock market
reports and so on.
How much does
layout and design matter to readers?
The answer is that
while most readers want an attractive and easy-to-read paper, those things are
not usually their highest priority. Most often they have other priorities, such
as newspapers that are honest or unbiased, papers whose administrators are
known and liked, papers that do a good job covering local and national news or
papers that best represent their personal views and special interests.
Many of the leading
newspapers are well-designed, but they are not purchased primarily because of
their design. Yet editors and publishers of these newspapers will argue that a
good design is a basic necessity that affects readership to a varying extent.
Well-designed
newspapers can be appealing to readers and help encourage them to spend more
time reading. While good design may help satisfy readers, it cannot replace
more important factors that also affect readability and salability. For
example, good design cannot substitute for the kind of news readers want. If
people want to read financial news and cannot find it, they will choose some
other paper or seek out some other news medium.
How
to recognise a well-designed newspaper
Although graphic
designers may disagree about the precise criteria of good design, there are
enough agreements among them to build a body of knowledge that can help people
recognise good design for themselves.
The general
characteristics of a well-designed paper are:
Good organisation: Good
design organises the news to help readers easily find whatever they are looking
for. Similar kinds of news ought to be in proximity of each other, if possible.
Readers dislike reading stories in one section of the paper and then having to
look for additional stories of the same kind in some distant part of the paper.
Modern newspapers have been categorizing news for years, and that helps the
organizational problem somewhat.
An attractive
newspaper: There usually is a sense of agreement about
what is attractive and what is not. Generally, an attractive newspaper has an
adequate amount of space between lines of type and between stories, or between
columns, on almost every page. Avoid what is known as a ‘tight page design,’
in which there is so little space between stories that readers have difficulty
concentrating their attention on any one. Good design tends to have generous
amounts of white space carefully distributed on a page.
Attractive display
of illustrations: High resolution photographs in at
least four columns are the ideal kind of illustration. This makes it easy to
see the details.
Photographs must be
given adequate space, and enough of them should be used to illustrate at least
the highlights of the news. They enhance the total page design if they are the
right size and number. There are no rules that require a precise number of
photographs be used each day or how large they should be. Artistic judgments is
usually required for the good use of illustrations.
A great deal of
artistic judgement is necessary to place illustrations on a page. Some
designers like at least one dominant illustration on every page, accompanied by
one or more smaller illustrations. The worst-designed pages tend to use
illustrations that are all about the same size.
Pages have
contrast: Of all the basic principles of design,
contrast is the most important for attractiveness. Pages should be designed to
have some, but not overwhelming, contrast. Contrast generally provides
attractive pages by offering readers a change of pace. The contrast may be
large versus small photographs, dark versus light sections of the page,
regular- or irregular-shaped stories or illustrations, vertically versus
horizontal shaped photographs.
Unity:
Attractive pages usually look unified, or, as if everything on the page were
carefully placed just where it is.
Different typefaces
are kept to a minimum: Computer users may be tempted to use
too many different typefaces (fonts) on the same page. They are used to having
many different type choices. The professional knows how many alternative faces
are just right. Again, it takes artistic experience to decide.
Pages have balance:
The best pages usually are not top- or bottom-heavy. Although readers usually
cannot recognise balance in particular, they get the feeling that a page is or
is not overbalanced, one way or the other.
Placement of
stories is well thought out: The top editors
and writers review the content of each issue (before it is laid out) from the
point of view of story importance. They decide where in the newspaper leading
stories should be positioned. Smaller or less important stories don’t require
long discussions about positioning and may be placed after all important
stories have been positioned.
Vertical and horizontal designs
A major
consideration in layouts is the appearance of story shapes. In past years,
story shapes were not a major consideration of layout editors. But as editors
have sought ways of making pages more attractive, story shapes have become more
important. The selection of the most appropriate shapes involves a number of
considerations. The first has to do with preventing a page from becoming
one-directional. Too many vertical shaped stories, all leading reader’s eyes
downward, make the page look old-fashioned and unattractive.
A simple design is
preferable. Such a layout is distinguished by horizontally shaped stories that
are continued into three or more adjacent columns. However, a page using
horizontally shaped stories exclusively may be as monotonous as one with all
vertically shaped stories. The best-looking pages have a mixture of shapes.
Filling remaining
space
When most of the
page has been dummied, the layout procedure is complete. Small spaces may
remain because not all stories fit precisely. The remaining space may be filled
in two ways: If the space is large enough, fillers may be used. Editors assign
someone the responsibility of providing a sufficient number of fillers each
day. If the space is relatively small, horizontal and vertical tracking is done
until the column is filled. If there is time, a story may be filled by a new
copy.
Flexibility in
layout
In planning the
layout of large newspapers, the editor should give some attention to
flexibility of design to accommodate late-breaking news. There are two
considerations in planning for a flexible design.
*A second
consideration is the effect that a major story change will have on total page
design. Although it is impossible to know how a late-breaking story will be
shaped, it may be possible to anticipate how stories of various shapes will
affect the design. If the original design is simple, chances are that any
changes can be adapted easily to the old design without destroying the original
appearance.
Inserts and page
design
Inserts are
additions to the story sometimes placed within the story’s body type. The
ostensible (seeming or stated to be real or true, when this is perhaps not the
case) purpose of breaking into a story is to provide information that helps the
reader better understand the news. In traditional layout practices, editors
often inserted ‘freaks,’ ‘refers’ or other material into the main body of a
story.
* Refer: A
‘refer’ is something that refers to a related story.
Boxed stories
The use of boxed
stories in contemporary modular layout is radically different from that in
traditional layout. In traditional layout, a short human-interest story or an
insert might have been placed in a box. Rarely was a long story boxed.
Contemporary layout
seeks to dramatise a story or the design on a given page, often through the use
of large boxed stories. There is, of course, a danger in using too many such
stories on a page. But if only one is used per page, it may liven that page
considerably.
An editor boxes a
story because he or she considers it significant. Perhaps it is not as
significant as the top two stories on the page, but it is still of major
importance. The procedure, then, is to place the entire story in a boxed rule.
The story must, of course, be squared off so that it fits neatly into the box.
A photograph may accompany the story.
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