I know that I am going to have much more "street cred" with my students when I show them this picture of one of their front pages being critiqued by a professional page designer.
It was a great experience today to receive a crash course on newspaper design. My school's newspaper has broken many of Tracy Collins's Ten Commandments. I really liked the the analogy to Tetris. Guilty, I'm afraid.
The session today made me really want to try going to a broadsheet format. Our newspaper is a tabloid format, and the thought has never really occurred to any of us to change it. I think if I share some examples with my students and let them know that we're not tied into the tabloid style, they might be open to it.
I have a hard time getting my students to understand that with design (and writing) the goal is to make things easy on the reader--be their sherpa. I really liked the idea of avoiding copy "gymnastics." I think if I frame it that way for my students, they will understand better.
Since I will actually have a newspaper class next year, I'm excited to be able to spend some quality time with them discussing these design fundamentals.
Liz Dixon
West Lafayette High School
West Lafayette, Ind.
I loved his Tetris comment. My high school paper was all doglegs, Dutch wraps and weird rules. Of course, we carved words into stone in that era.
ReplyDeleteSteve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix