Headlines and decks

speaking of hell, i been having nightmares about trying to make the agate page work and get it out on deadline. is that weird?

 

Depends on point size of the decks, too.

Our deck size is 24-point. That's a little large to say anything in just two lines. It also tends to look a little too big under any main head less than 48-point.

 

No, that's normal.

Do you dream that you'rre doing the agate page nude? That would be weird.

 

We use nut grafs instead of subheads; my limit on those is 3 decks.

 

This is the key when dealing with subs. The general rule should be 1/2 the size of the main hed. I think it is a major mistake to have a 24pt sub with a 36pt main. Too much weight. And to have a blanket rule on the sizes of subs is to paint the designer and copy editor into at 12p corner.

 

Same here from my last paper. We had a rail which took up one full column on the left. When you always have that anchor, you have to be a bit more flexible in your layout styles. Subheads or decks allow you to do that. They're not always the best tool, but I preferred to have as many layout options as possible.

 

My ME recently had a one column 11 deck hed on the front page- 6 main and 5 subhed. It was the fucking dumbest thing I've ever seen. The story jumped three paragraphs in and if I remember right, it was some snoozer piece about water pipe maintenance. I need to find a new job.

 

About Marty Schottenheimer.

 

Yeah, that's pretty bad...

 

I was against it until I noticed The NYT does it that way. Now I'm for it.

 

That or Sarunas Jasikevicius
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We use 2 or 3 subdecks .. no more, no less.

 

And how the fuck does a "new, young designer" get to set the rules for headline specs? Tell him he ain't at College U anymore, and that ain't the fucking way it's done here. Change it.