Painful Learning Experience

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.

Designing the Grady Requirement

It's no secret that I had a passionate hate for In Design while putting together my front page.

Having never worked with the program, and already being incompetent in computer skills, I knew I would be in for hours of painful clicking, dragging and deleting (accompanied by many curse words.)

Begrudgingly, I must admit I did learn how to use In Design somewhat sufficiently when lab was over last Wednesday. I might have even liked it.

Nevertheless, critiquing my front page in 400 words or less is going to be a little tricky.

First of all, I am pretty sure I used zero news judgment for my stories. I knew I wanted images that deserved space, even if the stories were not front page material. In my defense I'll say I was trying to focus on the design.

I wanted a simple and clean masthead that would allow space I needed for stories, but also allow a small space for a simple teaser, as seen by the turtle picture. On account of crappy photoshopping skills, my little Grady logo sits awkwardly in the upper right hand corner. Looking back, I would have moved it to the left and switched the teaser to the right to anchor the page a bit more.

In my opinion, it's hard to have a paper without a reefer. I didn't want to present a huge block of text on my front page, I ran the weather, a few promos and an index down the left side of the page. I definitely HAD to have a tornado graphic, so I hit up GOOGLE, and found the one I used for the weather. I would have loved to do something more graphically and standard with the reefer, but I had neither time nor the skills to make myself happy.

As far as modules go, I would not have used both L shaped modules because I feel like the page looks so uniform because of it. However, I was going for ease and that's what I got.

Redesigning this, I would have ran an image-less news worthy article at the top, centered a feature story with photo below it, stuck another story down the right side, and have another story with a smaller image for the bottom. However, I would need at least 3 more labs to redesign this so I think I'm out of luck for now.

I did learn a lot, but certainly not enough to ever, ever, want to do this again, especially on a daily basis. I feel like I am not even good enough for my hometown newspaper, The Brunswick News, which is probably why they refused to hire me last summer.

Looking back at the front page I designed, there are a number of mistakes that immediately jump out. The first thing I noticed was that the masthead is a rather dull. It's good that I tried to put some teasers up there, but some of the letters disappear into the images. The masthead could have been bigger and I would have liked to see some color on the top of the page. I noticed after looking through the rest of the classes' front pages that a lot of people used the left side of the page for refers to articles on the inside. Although a generally like the layout of the page, some refers would have been practical and given the paper a more modern look.
Also, the left side of the page looks a little gray. I could main story about bicycling could have used a pull quote and that would have helped solve the problem. I was rather disappointed by the fonts I chose. I would have rather used something a little more bold, or just larger. I think the masthead and headline fonts could be the main reason that the page looks bland.



Editors can't give all negative feedback. So, I would like to give myself some credit. The centered image is well-placed and serves as a good focal point. It's easy to tell that the picture is part of the story directly below it. The grouping of the two stories related to mental health was fairly well done, despite the headline “Stories raise awareness” seems irrelevant to the story. As I mentioned earlier, I do like the overall layout of the page. I was able to fit five stories without it looking too cluttered. Maybe one more picture and a couple pull quotes so that the page doesn't look so gray, and the page would be really well balanced.



It's clear from my inside page that my skills with InDesign improved over the last couple of labs. The page looks significantly better visually than my front page (though this could be a result of the editors choosing the fonts). Structurally it is somewhat boring, with one story sitting on top of the other. But, I like that the top story uses four wide columns while the second uses only three narrow columns. That design kept a page with only two articles perceptually more interesting. The pull quote I used does a fair job of summarizing the article in one phrase, and it keeps the page from looking gray like the front page. I initially had the image of Mark Fox on the left side and remembered it makes more sense to have him looking towards the article. The ad I placed on the bottom of the page is sort of large and tacky, but I filled the ad space with what I could find. Besides, that is a different department anyway. Overall I was more impressed with the inside page even though it only had two stories. I think it is pretty evident that I became more and more familiar with the software as time went on and if I had to make another page, it would look considerably better.

A Very Grady Finale

In formulating my front page, I considered several elements before attempting to create an original work. My first step was to consult the Newseum Web site to look at all of the possible options for my front page’s style. I also picked up several issues of the Red and Black and carefully considered their editorial decision making in lieu of taking the design for granted and flipping to the crossword.
I opted for a clean, crisp font for the masthead and let the creative title of our publication speak for itself. Drawing upon our lectures concerning the importance of pictures, I chose stories that had a strong, eye-catching pictures accompanying them so that I could attract the attention of my readers. As Professor Parks discussed in lecture, “design can draw readers in.” A captivating story may not grab reader interest if there is not an alluring picture to go along with it. Therefore, I chose two pictures that fit the bill for what Joe called the “cute” factor in his lecture. My main photo is of an adorable little girl, looking up as if to engage the reader. Another one of my photographs is of a dog. Following Amber’s advice in lab, I switched the placement of my photo and story concerning pet adoption so that the dog was facing inward. As we learned in lecture, it is preferable that all of the elements face inward to draw reader attention to the page itself.
The content of my stories constitutes a completely local angle, which is necessary for a small publication. It goes without saying that a smaller paper cannot outdo a large paper for covering national stories, so covering what interests Athens residents is the best way to go. With this in mind, I selected stories that covered a varied range of topics, from the economy to arts and culture. I also included the article about Zingo because it was of interest to my primary audience, the students in my class.

Through a million techical difficulties

I'm the type of person who hates hearing excuses but once I began my front page for our class, I was the biggest flake of all.

To be perfectly honest, these were real technical difficulties and Amber, thank you so much for being patient with me.

After our class editors presented each of their lab's front pages, I was a little bit annoyed that most of us in the Wednesday lab were uninformed about the creative leeway we were supposedly given. So, I re-vamped my front page to look a little less newspaper-y.

The masthead was left simple because I didn't want to overcrowd it and after trying to convince myself that I was an artsy person, I failed miserably. Thus, I used the Trajan font because it looked very authoritative and I put the date in red because I hear that is our school color.

I really liked how Brockton's paper had their dominant element in the center of the paper. It wasn't exactly a U-format but I liked the idea of the main stories being in the center of the front page with little to no text. Due to the limited resources I had to compose this paper, the only story that I had access to, with photos was Matt's piece on Cine. So as I'd like to say that the right column story was intentional, I won't lie, it's all I had.

In the end, I think it worked out great and I also wanted to create a table of contents column on the left hand side to make the front page seem even less newspaper-y. I also wanted to copy the layout of Bozeman Daily Chronicle's because it was easy on the eyes. To modify it, I wanted to make it much more visually appealing and less gray (less text) and that's why I decided to overload it with pictures.




My favorite front page that I pulled from was the one pictured on the left. I liked the whole trashy read feel and as a reader, I don't feel overwhelmed by this page. The colors are also enticing as well.

Blog post in chief: Front page design

There it is: my front page. It also happens to be the page the class chose as the front page for our paper. I appreciated the design being chosen, although there are a few things I would change if I had the chance. Still, I guess I'm supposed to talk about how I designed it. So okay.

My background in design is exclusively in newspapers. I was the editor in chief for my high school newspaper, so I did a lot of page layout there. For that reason, when I conceptualized the front page, the style I came up with was very newsy - modular, designed with clean, segmented blocks and lines, and focused on the stories themselves. I also wanted to include a refer sidebar, an index, teasers above the masthead, and a weather/sports section.

Claire and I decided what stories we would run, as well as where they would go. The budget story - as it affects so many students - would be the lead news story. The streaking story - an interesting, fun feature - would be the dominant element.

In order to lay out the stories, I looked over Newseum's front page gallery, specifically the AJC (before their weird new redesign) and the Virginian-Pilot (what up, Perry?). My masthead was designed through experimentation; I wanted something classical but striking, so I looked for a font I liked and then layed the words out in what I thought was an interesting way.

I think my teasers turned out really well. I don't have a lot to say about them other than that it was the result of me playing with visual ideas that I've always liked, and I think I pulled off what I was going for.

If I could change anything about my design (other than the unfinished refers and the fact that this image doesn't include jump-lines on most of the stories), I would do something to make the middle of the page less gray. Because the art on the streaking story is all black-and-white, the whole middle section of the page is a little bland and samey. I would either do something interesting with the art or include a pull-quote or something like that. I also wish there were more air between the stories, headlines, etc., because I think the page is a little on the cramped and busy side.

The Grady Requirement, blog edition

When sitting down to start designing my front page, the first thing I tried to do was outline how I wanted the page to look. With the help of browsing some front pages from Newseum, I decided where I thought graphics and stories should go. Then I looked at the Red and Black and the Athens Banner Herald front pages to get more of an idea what local newspapers feature.

The first thing I did on InDesign was design my masthead. I wanted it to look professional, so I took a more traditional approach. Looking back and seeing everyone else’s mastheads, I wish I had been a little more creative. One thing Dr. Parks pointed out in lecture is that we were afraid of “big.” I think that was my problem with my masthead; I was afraid to make it too overbearing and settled for a weaker one. I added the unique lines around it so it would give it some kind of memorable trademark.

Next I sorted through the budget line to see which articles I thought would be best for the front page. I considered what content would get the most attention, graphics, and what I thought really represented the whole paper. I wanted the streaking story to be my biggest feature on the front page, but one of my main concerns was that the graphics were in black-and-white. That is why I ended up adding the blue color to my masthead and it ended up becoming a color scheme throughout the page. This issue also led me to choose the Eco-reach story because it had a really nice, bright photo.

Overall, I like my front page. Looking back, I would have liked to eliminate some of the text and make photos larger, but it is easy to read and I think I chose good stories for the front page. Through working on this project, I became much more comfortable with InDesign. Additionally, it was a good experience because I am less intimidated now to design a front page or any newspaper pages because I have done it before.