|
Type styles
and sizes
The
choice of type faces you will use in your newspaper is more important
than you may realize. It demands your attention now, before you
actually begin to build and publish a newspaper. Do your
research and make a list of typeface, size and weight for each part of
the paper.
Newspaper design is a study in irony The better the design, the
less anyone notices the design. The good design opens the way for
the reader to move easily along, making each transition smooth,
conveying all the information in proper amounts, offering more for those
wanting more, without bogging the skimmer down in a sea of words.
Likewise, decoration is there, but it never calls attention to itself.
Function is everywhere, and everywhere it dictates the form.
If you
see yourself as an artist, then think of newspaper publishing as a
"Shaker" design. The Shakers believed that form should always
follow function. The furniture they built, for example, was never
overly ornate or heavy. The design was always very clean, simple,
functional. The result was not plain or crude furniture, as one
might imagine, but a practical and enduring elegance.
A
newspaper should always be designed for reading. That is the
primary function: to convey information. Photos, illustrations,
page design and typefaces should all selected and used with the primary
function in mind.
Plan to be
Consistent
While
it's good to make the pages interesting and even attractive, the
greatest kindness you can show to readers is to make the newspaper easy
to read. Typefaces for the larger bodies of copy and for the
headings should be clean. They should contribute to the
organization (clean, well-defined areas of information) and to the flow
of thought.
I
like Arial. It’s a clean type face or font. I use it on all
my web pages, and I seldom use any other font with it. You may be more
familiar with Helvetica, Swiss, Humanist, or another sans serif font.
But when producing newspapers,
I always use Times New Roman, or some other Times for my body copy.
For
headings, I might use something like Swiss Black Condensed, like Swiss 721 Black
Condensed. There are main headings, such as the big ones you will want
for the front page headlines. And there are various kinds of subheadings, some
bold, some italicized, and some simple.
In the newspaper you will produce, you will want to be consistent.
That doesn’t mean boring. Don’t use the same face and the same
weight (such as bold) for
everything. Headlines should be large and very bold.
Subheadings should still stand out as headings, but not be as big as the
main headlines. Body copy should be of a consistent size and
weight throughout the paper. Page numbers, and the paper's name
should be in the same relative positions on every page, and in the same
typeface, size and weight. This kind of consistency makes the paper easy
to navigate and understand.
Use the type faces to decorate and display your
information. You can create nice blocks of information, appealing
visual sections on each page.
On the other hand,
there’s no need to go crazy with serendipity or “creativity.” Just
think about how you want the pages to look, and think of how the white
space can work with the black type to generate logical, easy-to-follow
patterns for the eye to follow and work with.
It’s important, I
think, to have a variety of sizes and faces, already selected (and
tagged, according to how you plan to use them) for the different needs
you’ll have in your paper.
Ads will be a part
of most inside pages. So you should also give thought to how the ads
will either add to or take away from the design or look of each page.
If you're building your own ads, then you'll always want to think
about designing them to enhance not only the advertiser’s product or
service, but also your newspaper pages.
Just a few thoughts on basic visual style.
Jim |
