I learned a lot about newspapers from this project. There is much more thought that goes into design than I had previously thought there was.The stories that I chose were the Tate expansion, UGA honeybees, AIDS on campus, and job search. I chose these because they seemed to be the most newsworthy and relevant to UGA students.
Before designing my front page, I looked at other newspapers such as the Red and Black to see what layouts worked and which didn’t. I also looked at the AJC online to see how they credited their stories and photos.
Although I had great examples to go by, I still did not find this assignment easy. I am technologically challenged, and will not forget the day I cursed out loud in class over this assignment. I’m sure those of you who sit near me won’t forget that moment either.
It was difficult for me to place photos, to text-wrap, and even come up with headlines to accompany stories. I felt like I was the only one who didn’t understand the program, and I didn’t want to annoy everyone with my thousands of questions.
As previously said, I’m not the best with computers, so when I compare my front page to the front pages of others I feel slightly embarrassed. I did not think to use pull quotes or reefers. I did, however, keep my front page clean and orderly with the use of lines that separated my stories from each other. I also made sure that the placement of the stories was varied so that the paper looked interesting.
I’m not sure that I would buy my newspaper if I saw it in a store, but at least I made it through the project.
All in all, I’d say that this design project was as painful as having teeth pulled, but the other day when I went to design the front page of a magazine for a class project I sure was glad I knew a thing or two about InDesign.
You may consider yourself technologically challenged, but you still made your design work. The four articles are all laid out differently and your masthead is simple and clean. I especially like the border. Yeah, the photo placement was the hardest part of the assignment in my opinion too. I feel like the InDesign methods of text wrapping boxes was pretty unintuitive, especially how you would sometimes have to re-arrange the boxes in order to edit their properties.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about this project being a really great learning experience. There is a lot I learned from not only the professional examples we looked but also from the work of all of our classmates. Your design is really clean and easy to read, and I like your masthead. I also like the way you spread out the Tate story, and I think adding a graphic with it would have made it even more impressive.
ReplyDeleteJordan,
ReplyDeleteI think you are being a bit too hard on yourself. I see a great deal to like about your front page, especially how clearly your modules are laid out. At first glance, your readers have no question about which photos belong with which stories, etc. Sometimes learning is painful (I can remember having similar feelings in chemistry classes); but I hope the end result was worth it. :) Thank you for your diligence.