Lecture Three

Lecture Note 3

NEWSPAPER DESIGN 

Newspaper design is a relatively new term that incorporated many of the activities of other terms such as Newspaper makeup and Layout but with more artistic and creative judgments about arranging the contents of a Newspaper. The most important role of newspaper design is its creative art which give the layout editor several possibilities of varying his newspaper design to give it an entirely different from other newspapers.

Basically, newspaper designers judge the value of a designed spread by looking at it themselves and imagining how readers could perceive it or sense what it feels like. Actual feedback on readers’ perception of the design is very scarce.

 

Simply put, to design a newspaper is to outline or draw a plan on how materials- stories, headlines, pictures, captions, illustrations and advertisements on a page will be arranged or organised. Its main aim is to present those materials in the most attractive way so as to help move the readers easily and efficiently through the pages.

DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN

There are many factors that propel the development of design, but the most prominent ones are:

1.      Technological Innovations: This has to do with the development in science and technology that world witness over the last hundred years which change people’s taste and styles. Software such as Adobe PageMaker, CorelDraw, Microsoft picture editor etc had revolutionized the entire newspaper/magazine production process.

2.      Societal factors: Newspaper design had undergone lots of changes due to reasons of War/Conflicts, Mass Culture, consumerism and other societal happenings. These push the newspaper editors to design their papers so as to attract more readers.

3.      The Growth of Advertising: Advertisers, who directly or indirectly, control to some extent, the content of the newspaper compelled the editors to spend their time and resources in improving the design of their papers to attract and hold the attention of not only the readers, but practically the advertisers and this greatly shaped the development of newspaper design.

4.      Sensational Journalism: In response to some of the challenges posed by the visual media, newspapers over dramatizing news values to retain their audiences/readers. These news values are numbered more than 20, but we will list only 10.

a.       Proximity,

b.      Prominence

c.       Timeliness

d.      Impact

e.       Conflict

f.       Human interest

g.      Conflict

h.      Suspense

i.        Mystery 

j.        Magnitude

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

Understanding these principles of great design is critical in being able to present news and features in an attractive way. This newspaper layout and design course delivers a solid grounding on the basics of page layout, colour and how text works with pictures – enabling you to create attractive pages on your screen. These principles are:

1.      Balance: This is a means of achieving equilibrium. A page should not be overwhelmingly heavy in one section and extremely light in another. Ex. Placing a Larger Bold headline at the top while placing a light headline at the bottom. Those elements that need balancing include pictures and headlines. The idea is to avoid much gravitating of the reader’s eyes towards the heavy section. In effect, if a big picture or headline is placed at the top, a similar picture not necessarily the same in all respect, must be placed at the bottom to achieve visual balance.

The center of a page is considered as the focal point while the top and the bottom of the page are the areas where balance must be established. Balance is most often done between top and bottom rather than side by side.

Page balance may be formal or informal. Formal balance is achieved by placing headlines/pictures of the same size on either side of the page. It is sometimes called symmetrical balance because; one side of the page tends to mirror the other. The informal balance on the other hand is the top and bottom balance which most newspapers employed.

2.      Contrast: This is the principle of using at least two or more elements on a page, each of which is grammatically different from the other. Ex. Matching 2 different pictures or headlines. Contrast is a means of preventing artistic elements from becoming dull. Some elements that need to contrasted are:

·         Roman Headline with an italic

·         Light body type with bold body type

·         Vertical make up with a horizontal make up

From the above therefore, we can safely say that contrast may be achieved in four general ways: shape, size, weight and direction

·         Shape contrast may consist of a story set flush on both sides in opposition to another story set flush left. Or an outline picture may be used with a rectangular picture.

·         Size contrast may achieved by using large illustrations with smaller ones on the same page, or large type with smaller type.

·         Weight contrast may employ a picture that appears very black with a lighter picture, or a story set in boldface type contrasted with another one set in lighter typefaces.

·         Direction contrast could show vertically shaped stories contrasted with a horizontally shaped stories on the same page.

These contrasts are but a few contrast alternatives of the many that are possible on any gieven page. An objective of designing a page is to achieve a pleasant contrast.

3.      Unity: This is a harmonious relationship among various elements (Text or Illustrations) in a printed copy. A page that does not have unity will appear as mere a collection of stories, each competing for attention.

Lack of unity often results when stories are laid from the top of the page downward. The layout editor is building a page piece by piece and therefore cannot be sure how each story will contribute to the overall page design until the layout is complete. At that point, the layout editor may find that there is no enough time to shift stories around to achieve unity. The result is that, readers may find it difficult to concentrate on any one section of the page because of too many centers of interest. A unified page on the other hand, appears as if everything is in its correct position and the page is therefore interesting.

An editor plans for a unified page by keeping the design of the entire page in mind at all times while working on any part of it. Each story therefore must be visually weighed against all other stories in terms of probable appearance of the entire page. The editor may have to shift some stories around on a dummy until satisfactory arrangements have been found.

4.      Proportion: This has to do with the shapes and sizes of each element in relation to other elements on a page. Ex. The length or shape of a story determines its relationship with other stories. Lead story on a page has a very bold-large headline than the rest. The length of a story may be compared with its breadth and the width of a photograph may be compared with its depth.

What the designer must know is that, unequal proportions are usually more attractive than equal proportion. Thus, rectangular shaped stories, pictures, illustrations, etc are often considered graphically more attractive than the square ones.

LECTURE NOTE V

BAYERO UNIVERSITY, KANO

2013/2014 NEWSPAPER EDITING, LAYOUT AND DESIGN

LECTURE NOTE V

AN INTRODUCTION TO USING TYPE

One of the most important tools that Editor has to work with is type. Understanding type is a must for any aspiring Editor. He/she must acquaint himself/herself with because it is what we use most.

• Different Typefaces

Typefaces are grouped into families as they share similarities which include weight, or thickness, and the width of the characters. Type families may have different characteristics such weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization, ornamentation, and designer or foundry, but not by size.

Typefaces can be divided into two main categories: serif and sans serif. Serifs comprise the small features at the end of strokes within letters. The printing industry refers to typeface without serifs as sans serif (from French sans, meaning without), or as grotesque (or, in German, grotesk).

Serifs

	Sans serif font
	Serif font
	font with serifs highlighted in red

Great variety exists among both serif and sans serif typefaces. Both groups contain faces designed for setting large amounts of body text, and others intended primarily as decorative. The presence or absence of serifs forms is only one of many factors to consider when choosing a typeface.

There are various kinds of types or typefaces, and they are grouped into different families or classes, based on shared identity. The conventional classification of types yields the following categories:

(a) Modern

(b) Old style

(c) Sans serif

(d) Script

(e) Venetian.

But the average computer has over 37 fonts from which the compositor may select, depending on the instructions he receives and his judgment on how best the instructions can be carried out. The fonts that are common on the computer include the following among others:

 New Times Romans

Arial

Tahoma

Georgia

Arial black

Arial Narrow

Book Antiqua

Bookman old style

Century Gothic

Comic Sans Ms

Courier New

Enstrangello Edessa

Franklin Gothic Medium

Garamond

Guatami

Haettenschweiler

Impact

Latha

Lucida Console

Lucida Sans Unicode

Mangal

Marlett

Microsoft Sans Serif

Monotype Corsiva

MS Outlook

MV Boli

Palatino Linotype

Raavi

Shruti

Sylfaen

Symbol

Trebuchet Ms

Tunga

Verdana

Webdings

While some of these fonts are variants of others, some are special and are on their own. A simple exercise which you can do to get to know these fonts better is to type a short piece on the computer, and to change it repeatedly from one font to the other. This way, the peculiarities and differences of the various fonts will be better appreciated.

Type Selection Principles

Many factors influence the selection of a typeface for newspaper or magazine.  Selecting the right typeface is a mixture of firm rules and loose intuition, and takes years of experience to develop a feeling for

A.     Dress For The Occasion

B.     Know Your Families: Grouping Fonts

C.     Don’t Be a Wimp: The Principle of Decisive Contrast

D.    A Little Can Go a Long Way

E.     Rule Number Five Is ‘There Are No Rules’

General Type Measurements

To understand how type works, you must know how it is measured. Basically, typefaces can be measured in two ways: height and width.

Type height

In earlier times when type was molded out of metal, it was sold in discrete sizes that were measured in points. Today's digital types can be enlarged or reduced by simply selecting, or specifying, a point size.

Originally, the term point size referred to the height of the metal body that held the characters. This was slightly larger than the distance from the highest to the lowest feature in the design.
A traditional point is approximately 1/72 of an inch or .01384 inch. With the advent of desktop publishing, the point became exactly 1/72 of an inch. 12 points = 1 pica, and 6 picas = 1 inch.
This method of measuring is still used for digital type. Often, because some faces have very long ascenders and descenders, these typefaces look smaller than others when both are printed at the same point size. This incongruity is illustrated below.

Type width

In addition to height, a typeface is commonly measured by its width. The width of a typeface is often expressed in characters per pica, that is, the average number of characters that will fit within a pica. Characters-per-pica information is used for copy fitting to estimate whether text set in a specific typeface will fit into an allotted space or, conversely, to estimate how much space a given piece of text will occupy. This information can also be used to compare the relative widths of different typefaces.

COPY-EDITING & PROOFREADING SYMBOLS

As a copyeditor or proofreader, you know that you can’t know everything, so you need outside resources and references and lots of them. Although most resources are available online, it’s still helpful to have certain books on hand. And, of course, you need to know your proofreading symbols so that you can make changes and understand other editors’ changes

Must-Have References for Copyediting and Proofreading

If you’re a copyeditor or proofreader, you know the importance of good reference sources. Much of the information in desk references can be found on the Internet, but a good copyeditor or proofreader should have hard-copy references as well. (You never know when your Internet connection may slow to a crawl.) The following list contains five references you can’t live without:

·         House style sheet: You get this reference from the company you work for or, if you freelance, the person who hires you. When you question how something is presented in a document, it’s the first reference you check.

·         Style manual: Your employer or client is likely to have a favored style manual, which may be The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, or The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. If the house style sheet doesn’t answer your question, check the style manual. And make sure you know which edition of the style manual is being used.

·         Dictionary: Don’t copyedit or proofread without one. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition is preferred by many professionals, but you must use whatever dictionary your employer or client prefers. Get the latest edition; language changes quickly, especially in the technical realm.

·         Grammar and usage guide: Some examples are Garner’s Modern American Usage, The Elements of Style, Words Into Type, and The Merriam-Webster Usage Dictionary.

·         Specialty references: Some books that may be helpful include The Synonym Finder by Rodale, Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, Wired Style, and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Depending on the types of projects you work on, your bookshelf may soon sport specialty references you never imagined needing.

PROOFREADERS' MARKS

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Symbol	Meaning	Example
	delete
	close up
	delete and close up
	caret
	insert a space
	space evenly
	let stand
	transpose
	used to separate two or more marks and often as a concluding stroke at the end of an insertion
	set farther to the left
	set farther to the right
	set as ligature (such as )
	align horizontally
	align vertically
	broken character
	indent or insert em quad space
	begin a new paragraph
	spell out
	set in CAPITALS
	set in SMALL CAPITALS
	set in lowercase
	set in italic
	set in roman
	set in boldface
	hyphen	multi-colored
	en dash	1965–72
	em (or long) dash	Now—at last!—we know.
	superscript or superior
	subscript or inferior
	centered
	comma
	apostrophe
	period
	semicolon
	colon
	quotation marks
	parentheses
	brackets
	query to author: has this been set as intended?
	push down a work-up
	turn over an inverted letter
	wrong font

The last three symbols are unlikely to be needed in marking proofs of photocomposed matter.

The Importance of Graphic Elements

Graphic elements such as pictures, cartoons, graphs, whitespace etc. play a very important role in good publications. In addition to providing evidence, they communicate more vividly and add aesthetic value. They provide a break from the monotony of text, and enable the reader to relax while still getting informed or educated.

Reader's eyes have a tendency to follow the line of sight of people in pictures. Therefore, if people in a picture look off the page, readers will tend to look off the page. To prevent the reader from doing this, the main subjects in pictures should look straight ahead or into the page. This also holds true for pictures showing action. The motion should go toward the center of the page whenever possible. This reader tendency can be used to your advantage. The line of sight and motion can be used to guide the reader's eye through a page.

Graphics in newspapers serve many purposes. One way of categorizing them is by dividing these graphics into two broad fields:

Flavour graphics and informational graphics.

1.      The purpose of flavour’ graphics is to inspire the reader to read the story, and they do not serve any particular purpose to inform or help the reader understand the story more fully. Flavour graphics are often illustrations, and serve the same purpose as photography. They are used when relevant photography is not available or cannot illustrate the story in the way the editor intended.

2.      Informational graphics on the other hand cover a hinterland between photography and illustration and are used when a story cannot be properly told by words accompanied only by photography or illustration. An informational graphic has the advantage of being able to ‘visually explain spatial relationships and so simplify and give the reader a fuller understanding of a story.

Photographer-Editor relationships

A picture editor: Someone who helps bring out the potential in photographers by expanding what they’re capable of seeing and saying with their pictures, from the conception of a subject matter through approach to that subject, establishing a structure for the set of pictures and then selection and sequencing of images. An equal role is advising photographers on what they’re doing well and what they could do better.

Within a publishing environment, a picture editor creates an environment where photography is a voice equal to words and design. The picture editor advocates for strong photography and is heard.

A good picture editor is like a good movie director.

When working with a picture editor, you are either stuck with or blessed by that picture’s editor’s depth of ability to see and feel and understand you and your photography. A picture editor can trample photographers by inflicting them with his or her way of seeing, in the same way that a director can trample actors by forcing his vision on them, instead of coaxing their best from them.

Bad picture editors have images in their minds and expect photographers to make those pictures, verbatim, and then try to force those pictures into an edit; good picture editors work with the photographer to determine the qualities that should come from a situation and let the photographer’s skill come to play in creating images that convey those qualities and then through editing elevates the story telling further.

Bad picture editors cow to the needs and wants of the publication without setting a visual bar, a standard; they routinely make photographers compromise their work. Good ones establish a standard for photography and utilize a variety of ways to explain those standards in measurable ways that become clear to writers, editors and designers, while offering solutions that do meet the publication’s needs.

In other words, good picture editors bring the best out of photographers to create bodies of work that a publishing environment recognizes will compel its audience.

Editing Decision

When there are errors in the use of pictures and other illustrative materials create both distraction and frustration. Indeed, any publication that has so many of such errors will possibly be held in disdain by readers and this call for picture editing

Picture Editing

Picture editing refers to the selection and treatment of pictures for publication. It requires careful study because of the vital importance of pictures in publications. Imagine a newspaper or a magazine without pictures! It would be very boring and unattractive.

Picture editing decisions involves the following:

·         Selection: Selecting or choosing involves taking a decision on whether a particular picture is suitable or not, in the first place. If a picture is considered unsuitable, it is discarded right away. If it is suitable, other decisions as discussed below will then follow.

o   Where two pictures are available for a single space, a choice has to be made on which of them will be more effective, and where the available pictures are many, a choice has to be made on which will be the most effective.

·         Cropping: The second consideration is: which part of a picture? Cropping (as the framing of part of a photograph is called) is the crucial refinement. A picture needs to be cropped so that the desired effect or effect can be produced. Perhaps, a picture of a personality was taken at a high table while he was seated with other guests, but you want the other guests out so that focus can be on the particular personality. Through cropping, this and other things can be done. The whole caption or a portion, the impact, and indeed the very content of a picture can be changed by cropping.

·         Sizing: A decision must also be made on the amount of space that a particular picture will occupy. This decision is basically based on the importance of the picture to the story. It is also good to decide the extent to which a picture needs to be augmented by a caption or a headline. Few pictures are complete without some words of explanation, if only to record when and where they were taken.