THE ELEMENTS OF DESIGN IN NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES - GRAPHICAL GUIDELINES




Newspapering design is the process of arranging materials on a newspaper page, according to editorial and graphical guidelines and goals. Main editorial goals include: the ordering of news stories by of order of importance while graphical considerations include: readability and balanced, unobtrusive incorporation of advertising. The era of modern newspapers began in the mid-nineteenth century, with the industrial revolution, and increased capacities for printing and distribution. Over time, improvements in printing technology, graphical design and editorial standards have led to changes and improvements in the look and readability of newspapers.


Nineteenth-century newspapers were often densely packed with type, often arranged vertically, with multiple headlines for each article. A number of the same technology limitations resisted until the advent of digital typesetting and pagination in late with century. “USA today” was a leader in design changes, and was largely responsible for adding tools such as colour and into graphics to newspapers design vocabulary. These changes are partly intended to help readers “navigate” to scan and see priorities some of these changes included:

·     Fewer articles per page.
·     Modules or squaring off of articles and packages of related materials. Modules avoid what is known as “doglegs” or inverted –“L” shapes.
·     More standardized column widths.
·     More standardize typefaces. More “art”- non text elements, usually photos but often including advertising or outline (or shaded) boxes for featured stories. More white space known as “air. An area with too with white space is called “tight, and too much white space is called “loose”.
·     Colour.
 
PROCESSES
Designers typically use desktop publishing software to arrange the elements on the pages directly. In the past, before digital prepress pagination, designers used precise “Lay Out Dummies” to direct the exact layout of elements for each page. A complete layout dummy was required for designating proper column widths by which a typesetter would set type, and arrange columns of text. Layout also required the calculation of lengths of copy (text in column inches”) for any chosen width. Much of the variance and incoherence of early newspapers was due to the fact that last minute corrections were exclusively handled by typesetters. With photographic printing process, typesetting gave way to paste-up, whereby columns of type were printed by machines (Phototypesetters) on high resolution film for paste-up on photographed final prints. These prints in turn were “shot to steel emulsion photographic plates.

Though paste-up put an end to cumbersome typesetting, this still required planned layouts and set column widths. Photographic plates are (still) wrapped on printing drums to directly apply ink to new sprint (paper). In the mid 1990s, the paste-up process gave way to the direct to plate process, where computer paginated files were optically transmitted directly to the photographic plate. Replacing several in-between steps in newspaper production, direct to plate pagination allowed for much more flexibility and precision than before. Designers today still used column grid layouts only with layout softwares, Quark express, Microsoft publisher, and Adobe in design are the most popular and professional but there are free alternatives such as scribus and even word processors such as open office organization writer.

THE ELEMENTS OF DESIGN
 1.   BALANCE: The designer makes very sure that pictures are well weighed, and placed on the either side of the newspaper page.
2.   CONTRAST: It can be achieved by using different colours and typefaces.
3.   PROPORTION: The designer attempts to also achieve proportion. This is compared between size of picture, layout and shapes of news stories.
4.   RHYTHM: The designer here makes sure that he measures his tempo very well.
5.   UNITY: The unification of every thing on the newspaper page is very important.
6.   HARMONY: The designer makes sure that pictures, paragraphs, and sentences are well placed in such a manner that will attract attention.

SOME STEPS IN NEWSPAPERING DESIGN
1.   Organization: arrange and organize your contents very well.
2.   Consider your ‘art”
3.   Know and use grid carefully-5 columns, 6 columns can be useful for running information boxes, mug shorts etc.
4.   Keep the design on the grid. For instance, on a 6 column gird, run a story over 3 columns and another story over two and a story over one.
5.   Create a dominant headline. Consider 60pt, even 70pt, but probably no less than 52pt for the most important story. The hierarchy of story headlines should be at least 6pt difference. If the biggest story is 52pt, the next highest should be 48, 42, 36 and so on. Some consider a 10pt or 8pt size difference to be preferable.
6.   Back to the photos, dominant vs secondary. What photo advances the story the best? Look for emotion, dynamics and movement, unusual angels and intense or intimate movements. Then play them big for columns wide on a 6 column grid.
7.   If you have multiple photos, the second photo should not be greater than half the size of the dominant.
8.   Add layering .
9.   Have someone like the copy editor look at so as to proof the headlines, layers, body copy and correct errors.
10.          Then send the page to the press.

DESIGN OPTIONS
Designers choose photo sizes and headline sizes (both the size of the letters and how much space the headline will take). They may decide what articles will go on which pages and where on the page alone or in consultation with editors. They may choose typefaces for special pages, but newspapers usually heave a design style that determines most routine uses.  Edmund Arnold is a notable newspaper designer and is widely credited as the father of modern newspaper design.
 
REFERENCE
   Harrower, Tim the newspaper designer’s handbook
   Online, Design and effective newspaper or newsletter
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