1. Newspaper
design, and
design in
general, is all
DESIGN AND GRAPHICS about getting
people who
don’t want to
read, to read!

2. DESIGN
 Basic rules derived from studies of how people read type
 Once you understand these rules, follow or break them.
 Every publication has a look that’s consistent, including
typefaces of headlines and body copy, the size of the margins
and the location of certain regular features
 The first rule of newspaper design is that design is content.
 Therefore, good design shows what’s important, where to find things,
how to make sense of the info
 It has been said design is journalism – because visual choices should be
about information, not decoration

3. FIRST PRINCIPLE
 Balance: every element on a page has a visual weight
 In general, large objects are heavier than small ones, color is heavier
than black and white
 If you put all the pictures at the top of the page, it will look top -
heavy.
 If all the images are on one side, it will look lopsided.
 A well designed page is balanced horizontally and vertically.

4. SECOND AND THIRD PRINCIPLES
 Consistency – helps build trust and loyalty among readers if
they know where to find what they’re looking for and what
certain things mean.
 Use the same margins, fonts and color scheme throughout the paper
 Contrast – while you want to maintain consistency, you also
don’t want to be boring.
 You can make a page visually interesting by varying shapes, colors
and sizes.
 The key is to provide just enough contrast that the page looks more
interesting instead of more cluttered or confusing

5. FOURTH AND FIFTH PRINCIPLES
 Visual hierarchy – tells the reader what’s most important by
putting key elements in the most visible positions.
 Stories with the greatest news value should be at the top of the page
and have the largest headlines.
 Down the page, headlines should appear smaller, indicating that the
stories are less important
 Pages should be about one-third art
 If you don’t have a photo or info graphic for a story, try using an info
box or a pull quote to break up the text and create another point of
entry.
 Since we don’t have a graphic artist on staff, we should be using
more maps and simple charts to convey info visually.
 Simplicity - fewer elements and more white space
 Functional and uncluttered
 Avoid jumps as much as possible and don’t jump a story more than
once

6. T YPOGRAPHY
 The primary function of type as a newspaper person is to
make reading easy.
 Type should be clear and legible.
 It may look cool to use funky typefaces or run words up one side of
the page or run pink text on a black background, but if people can’t
read it, you’ve failed.
 Type how its own language:
 Typeface, or font – set of characters in one format
 Font family – group of related fonts with a variety of weights and styles
 Serif type – a font with tiny strokes, or serifs, at the tips of each letter.
Most body text is set in serif type.
 Sans serif – font without serifs. Slightly harder to read than serif, so
newspapers use sans for larger type such as headlines and reverse type or
small blocks of type like photo captions

7. T YPOGRAPHY
 Type size – measured in two ways – face is measured
vertically in points, with 72 points to the inch
 Width of a line of type is measured horizontally in picas, with
6 picas equal to one inch. So a headline set in 72 -point type
across an 18-pica column would be one inch high and 3
inches wide.
 (72 points = 1 inch but 18 picas = 6 picas for each inch so 3 inches)
 Leading – space between lines
 Body text is generally set with 2 points of leading
 Body type – usually 12 points or smaller, used for text
 Display type – large usually 14 or higher, for display info like
headlines
 Agate type – smallest point size type, usually 5 or 6, often used for
sports scores or stocks
 Alignment – the way type starts and ends on a line: left, centered ,
justified

8. Typography
 Font – light, medium, demi bold, bold…
 Serif – look at the p – small projections sticking off the ends of certain letters
 Ascender – portions of lowercase letters that stuck above the x -height
 Descender – potions of lowercase letters that stick below the x-height
 X-height – height of lowercase letters without ascender or descenders
 Baseline – an imaginary line on which type rests
 Size – measured in points from the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender

9. WHITE SPACE
 These empty areas give readers a break. But it should be
planned like everything else on the page.
 It’s best used in corners or outer areas of a page.
 Large areas of white space in the middle of a page can get
“trapped” and distract readers from other elements – like
body text, photos and headlines
 White space should also be consistent throughout: gutters,
the vertical spaces between columns, should be the same –
usually about 1 pica

10. MULTIPLE POINTS OF ENTRY
 One of the best jobs as journalists is attracting our audience
through multiple points of entry. Dif ferent strokes for
dif ferent folks, right?
 Some readers might enter through a headline, or a photo or a
graphic. So, you have a number of tools at your disposal:
 Info boxes: summarizes key points, upcoming events, actions at a
meeting, bio details about a person
 Refers – guide readers to a related story or stories on a different
page or on the web
 Info graphics – such as pie charts, bar graphs, maps that help
explain the story visually
 Pull quotes – something we should do more of: quotes from the story
that are set in larger type to attract readers to the story

11. MORE TOOLS
 Subheads: bolder than regular type and are used to break up
long stories.
 Rules – lines that are used to isolate or organize elements on
a page, separate stories or indicate which elements go
together
 Screens – background tints, either gray or colored, that can
add contrast to a page
 For highlighting sidebars and infoboxes
 No more than 10 percent or 20
 Broadsheets and tabloids
 Newspapers come in two formats – broadsheets (five or six column) are
full-size papers, usually 22 inches long and 12 to 13 inches wide
 Tabloids (four or five) are roughly half that – usually 11 inches wide by 13
to 15 inches long
 Most college newspapers are tabloid because they’re handier and thicker
– a 16-page tabloid becomes an 8-age broadsheet

12. AS A DESIGNER…
 Often, your work doesn’t begin until after the stories are written
and the photos are shot.
 This is not how it should be. Designers need to be part of the
planning process from the beginning and should be among the
FIRST considerations at the newspaper.
 Designers must think of themselves are journalists
 Stylebook – the staff needs one to go by that will set the rules in
place of how the newspaper is produced
 To include: an index
 A statement of philosophy – what is the design of the paper trying to do?
 A font palette – most newspapers have one font for text, one or two
others for headlines. You may choose others for special touches.
 A graphics policy – how graphcis get done at your paper and lay down
the rules for type fonts and sizes for infographics or photo elements. This
section should include a copy of the graphics request form, the
document you use to assign infographics.
 A photo section – policies on cropping, cutlines, running text over photos
and a photo ethics policy about color correcting and altering photos. Also
a photo request form

13. LINKS
 http://ronreason.com for tips on finding your personal brand
 Newseum.org/todaysfrontpages
 Snd.org – Society for News Design – sponsors scholarships
and grants that help students attend national workshops and
enter competitions
 Spd.org – Society of Publication Designers – jobs, blogs and
the like
 Newseum.org/todaysfrontpages