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.