I've sorted the text width so far which has meant a slight bit of redesigning, but I'm still considering how to approach the images problem. I'm either going to go with captions or a pop-up piece of Javascript, and I really want to lean towards the former. If anyone's got any ideas or comments, you know how to get in touch.
Then on Thursday we got more task bombs. I didn’t like how I was so close to the first deadline to design a masthead for a newspaper, but I got it in just in time. The reason I ended up being so close to the deadline was because I’d gone for a sans-serif font for my masthead title to begin with. Upon creating my masthead I soon realized that it didn’t look as good as I’d envisioned, so I knew I had to change to a serif font. I still kept the idea of having the date and issue number nestled in boxes at the side which I think worked, but I’m not sure if it’s something you’d normally see in a newspaper. It didn’t say in the brief anywhere that I had to produce a traditional newspaper masthead design though, so I tried to go for something a bit different. I much preferred my efforts after we’d done the second part of the activity which was to drop content in. Overall I think the tasks went well and as each week goes by I’m becoming more and more confident with my abilities to design properly, and I’m getting less anxious about having not very long to design. The task bombs are always the favorite part of my week.
When we go back we’ve got the dry runs of our presentations. This is making me slightly apprehensive at the moment because I’ve woefully shunned it to one side for a couple of weeks, so this week I’m going to be working on that properly to get my presentation together and cohesive. I can’t wait for the dry runs though, and I think it’s a great idea. Especially for our group as well, because it will mean we’ve got two practices in two weeks as for that week (or the next week) we’ve got presentation practice again. I really want to make a better effort this time of my presentation because I felt my last one left a lot to be desired.
7 comments:
Your Timed task from Thursday looks good. It's really inspiring that you have tried to use as many methods as possible to make the article look as professional as real newspaper articles. You really know your stuff!
I feel that my design was pretty good and I also added some professionalism into my design, but ran out of time to use a full range of methods.
Hi Craig, I thought I’d give you some feedback, as at this hour I’ve got nothing better to do. Firstly, I love the header; great use of contrast, although I think the ‘Jazz’ section is not high enough in contrast to the surrounding areas. I don’t think the typeface supports it well, and would have been better just white. The issue part looks great, I think in a similar way to the big issue that it contains it all in a block (not 100% sure on that reference!), and looks very contemporary.
For the headline, great font for it, classic style serif font, has a lot of impact. Not sure on the actual headline itself, where does it mention the end of British jazz? It may give readers the wrong impression. Pretty irrelevant though, as this isn’t a journalism course. I also like to see that you have realised that centred is acceptable on documents which are thinner than they are tall.
3 column layout is great (and I used it also) and provides enough flexibility without compromising cohesion. Using a deck has compromised the amount of space for the picture, but at least it has allowed you to show how to use the technique. It’s also good that you have highlighted the name in bold, like a lot of newspapers do.
On the actual body text itself, I think this is crying out for a drop cap, of 3 or 4 lines. I don’t think it would damage the integrity of the deck either. Thoughts? Body text itself looks great, again a sensible choice of serif font. I also like the pull quote being in a sans serif font, as it allows it to breath in the space generated by the text wrap box.
For the folio, I think the use of a thin stroke line is very good, and I wish I had been as restrained in mine (damn that Neville Brody 80sness). Personally, I think that the folio text is a little large, and since doing the task myself I have realised that folio text size can be tiny (just look in CR – must be about 4 or 6pt) It may have also been nice to do it in a similar way to the title, just to give a little cohesion between the top of the document and the bottom. Looking at them separately I don’t think you could tell they were part of the same document. Just my two cents though.
Marc - cheers for the comments. I looked at yours last night and I have to say yours is good too. I'll drop over some proper feedback in a bit.
Julian - As always, thank you for the in-depth feedback. I see your point about the contrast thing, but I was pushed for time and that serif font and header text appeared at the very last second. I previously had a sans-serif font and it looked awful.
The headline, well I was just having a laugh with it really. I couldn't really find any good ones in the text so I made a really un-informative one. Which is unwise for a proper newspaper, I know.
I actually went for a six column layout, that's what the underlying grid looks like. I didn't get the chance to use it on the front page, but I think this is the most flexible grid you could use for a newspaper. Either that or 5.
That was as big as I could make the picture for the place I wanted to put it in because of the size of my column. I wanted it to be in-line with my text, so that was as big as I could make it. I started by having a smaller deck and some of the text in the story at the start of the first column but it didn't look right.
On reflection, a drop cap may have been wise, but I just went with instinct and to be honest for this task it never crossed my mind. It was just one of those situations where I didn't feel it would help to use it. I mean you've got the deck to see where the body text starts, so I don't think it would either help nor hinder if it was stuck in.
I agree, folio text is too large. As I said in the blog post though, I was pushed for time in the first part of the exercise so I just had to quickly do that part as per my roughs. I didn't have enough time to take a step back and think "hmmm".
I was definitely always going to go for something as simple as that in the folio though, and not try to replicate the colours in the masthead. It would have affected legibility greatly.
I’m not sure that 6 would be such a good idea for a newsletter, don’t forget that the page is only A4. If you were only going to use the extra flexibility with graphics (like you have with the issue number stuff), I’d probably agree that it is the right way to go, especially if infographics were going to be used.
It’s very hard to pick a number of columns, because you don’t know what direction the newsletter will take with further articles. I think as long as you were disciplined enough, you could have the flexibility of 6, but only ever limit the body text to being 2 columns wide. I guess these are the design choices editors have to make when creating a magazine.
Hey Craig, Thanks.
I really liked the identity you had given your site too with the use of the question marks, I thought that was some noce design work.
I see the column debate is still raging Craig. I'm glad I went with a four column layout but I can see the six column layout being very flexible on something bigger than A4.
Yes I am glad to have the week off without having to worry about the task bombs too. As we need to have our presentation finished by the first Thursday back I am certainly going to have to spend some time on this. User testing on strangers may be a good idea as you may get entirely different responses compared to the one's from our group.
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