NEWSPAPER LAYOUT AND DESIGN

 Newspaper layout and design

 Layout

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.

 The mechanics of page layout

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.

 * The first is a mechanical consideration. Can one or two stories be replaced without too much effort? The task of remaking a page should be accomplished in the shortest amount of time to meet a press deadline. It may be necessary to rejustify as many as six columns of news in order to accommodate a late story. The new story may not be as long as the one it replaces, or it may be longer. Therefore, the design must be simple and flexible enough for any contingency.

*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.

 *Freak: A ‘freak’ is any material placed in a story that is set differently from the main story.

* Refer: A ‘refer’ is something that refers to a related story.

 But no matter what the purpose is, the effect of any break in the news is a break in the reader’s concentration.

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.