Learning page design

[JRoyal]

And definitely don't do it on inside pages. The headline should be next to the story on inside pages . If you see a 2-column hed, a 2-column photo and then a 2-column story, someone did it wrong.

 

[MNgremlin]

Not necessarily. I work as a design editor right now, and there are times (too many at some points) that I have no choice but to go in and rebuild a page without sending it back to the designer. Sometimes it's built on Thursday for Sunday's paper, and the designer is off Friday. Sometimes when I'm in at night and the other designer is swamped late or is simply inexperienced and we're against deadline, I do it because I can do it quicker and easier. If it's a big enough of an issue, I discuss it with them later. But not always.

Since it was my example in question, we were about 3-4 hours out from deadline on a slow day and I was sitting roughly 10 feet away.

He gave me a couple of pointers, but without much depth.

 

[BDC99]

Not necessarily. I work as a design editor right now, and there are times (too many at some points) that I have no choice but to go in and rebuild a page without sending it back to the designer. Sometimes it's built on Thursday for Sunday's paper, and the designer is off Friday. Sometimes when I'm in at night and the other designer is swamped late or is simply inexperienced and we're against deadline, I do it because I can do it quicker and easier. If it's a big enough of an issue, I discuss it with them later. But not always.

This is bull****. Why would you redo the page in the first place? Because it's not the way YOU would have done it? I don't think we're talking breaking news here. I understand redoing someone's work if it's seriously ****ed up and they're off that day. But if they are ****ty enough that you have to continually redo things, then they should have never been hired. But nobody ever learns anything by you swooping in and fixing mistakes. Tell them what you want and let them learn by DOING IT. It's the only way they will ever get better.

 

[BDC99]

OK a few things:

3) Like everyone has said, get to know the program. If you want to go from being a paginator to a designer (and no offense, but most people at most shops just paginate; there is little time in most modern newsrooms for design),

And this is bull**** as well. Most designers aren't actually designers? News to me.

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

This is bull****. Why would you redo the page in the first place? Because it's not the way YOU would have done it? I don't think we're talking breaking news here. I understand redoing someone's work if it's seriously ****ed up and they're off that day. But if they are ****ty enough that you have to continually redo things, then they should have never been hired. But nobody ever learns anything by you swooping in and fixing mistakes. Tell them what you want and let them learn by DOING IT. It's the only way they will ever get better.

+1

 

[JayFarrar]

Some pagination is design but, for the most part, it isn't.

Went to a seminar last week and the dude basically said if you aren't using illustrator, you aren't designing.

Hard to argue with if you get the difference between design and pagination.

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

I hope you didn't pay for that.

 

[JRoyal]

This is bull****. Why would you redo the page in the first place? Because it's not the way YOU would have done it? I don't think we're talking breaking news here. I understand redoing someone's work if it's seriously ****ed up and they're off that day. But if they are ****ty enough that you have to continually redo things, then they should have never been hired. But nobody ever learns anything by you swooping in and fixing mistakes. Tell them what you want and let them learn by DOING IT. It's the only way they will ever get better.

First, I never said I have to continually redo someone's work. I explained why there are times that an editor or other designer might have to redo someone's work. And I should have noted I only very rarely rebuild pages myself; only when it can't be avoided. Sometimes a page has to be down and there isn't time to send it back to the person who built it. Sometimes a section editor or one of my bosses wants to see it redone before the designer is in that night. There are lots of reasons and a lot of deadlines that have to be hit. There isn't always time to give it back to the designer. In this case, there was time and it should have been sent back. Other times, there simply isn't. If you work in the newspaper business and can't get that, you have issues.

 

[jr/shotglass]

If this thread can turn into a catfight, well, I guess any thread can.

It's freakin' newspaper design, guys. Take a breath.

 

[JRoyal]

This is bull****. Why would you redo the page in the first place? Because it's not the way YOU would have done it? I don't think we're talking breaking news here. I understand redoing someone's work if it's seriously ****ed up and they're off that day. But if they are ****ty enough that you have to continually redo things, then they should have never been hired. But nobody ever learns anything by you swooping in and fixing mistakes. Tell them what you want and let them learn by DOING IT. It's the only way they will ever get better.

And there are plenty of reasons a page has to be redone. Maybe a story got left off (possibly not even the designer's fault; could've been left off the budget he got). Maybe a photo editor wants to go with a different photo. Maybe the headline typography isn't any good. Even great designers can design a crappy page. Ideally, I discuss it with them and let them re-work things. But there isn't always time.

And just so we're clear, I don't want things done the way I would do it necessarily. I want my designers to have their own voice. But young designers need to be guided until they find that voice. Just like young writers.

 

[JRoyal]

Some pagination is design but, for the most part, it isn't.

Went to a seminar last week and the dude basically said if you aren't using illustrator, you aren't designing.

Hard to argue with if you get the difference between design and pagination.

There is definitely a difference between paginating and design, but using Illustrator isn't required for design. It helps, but it's not necessary at all.

 

[JRoyal]

Since it was my example in question, we were about 3-4 hours out from deadline on a slow day and I was sitting roughly 10 feet away.

He gave me a couple of pointers, but without much depth.

In that case, definitely not cool. He should have kicked the pages back to you. No reason for not doing it.

 

[JRoyal]

If this thread can turn into a catfight, well, I guess any thread can.

It's freakin' newspaper design, guys. Take a breath.

This is sj.com. ANY thread can turn into a catfight.

 

[BDC99]

And there are plenty of reasons a page has to be redone. Maybe a story got left off (possibly not even the designer's fault; could've been left off the budget he got). Maybe a photo editor wants to go with a different photo. Maybe the headline typography isn't any good. Even great designers can design a crappy page. Ideally, I discuss it with them and let them re-work things. But there isn't always time.

And just so we're clear, I don't want things done the way I would do it necessarily. I want my designers to have their own voice. But young designers need to be guided until they find that voice. Just like young writers.

Fair enough. Didn't mean to attack you not knowing the situations, but it sounded like this was something that happens often for you. I stand by the statement that designers learn by doing it themselves, but yes, there are scenarios where it has to be redone without the designers input. In such cases, I would hope the designer would get a sitdown to explain what the problem was. And if stories are being left off or photos are being swapped out, that's just poor planning, which is not good for any designer. And I've designed many a crappy page in my time, especially in my first stop.

 

[MNgremlin]

Hey look, it's me again...

So I took a big step recently in my page design education...I finally have Quark on my own machine. Before, I had to use a coworker's Mac if I wanted to practice. Fair to say it didn't happen often. Today, I put in about 3 hours, just re-familiarizing myself with the program. Also watched some tutorials on YouTube last night to help with that. Learned a bunch of tricks that I tried for myself today with mixed results.

One thing I'm still struggling with is photos. Not so much the how, but the why. Especially with resolutions and re-sizing. Also, does that all have to be done in Photoshop before importing the picture into Quark?

 

[Gomer]

I'll say yes to that but with a huge caveat: My shop is so bad I'm still using Quark 4.1. Like, a program that's 20 years old. I literally do not know if modern versions of Quark deal with photos differently.

I'll size every photo as I get it to the maximum size I think I'd use it - in most cases eight inches wide at 200 DPI. You can then quickly resize in the box in Quark by percentages. Just don't size the original too small and have to bump the percentage higher than 120 - it starts to look awful.

Read through this thread now and astonished at how bad I have it. I lay out 3-4 pages a day completely on my own, plus I write, sometimes take photos, etc. And I do it all on computers and software similar to what I learned on in the late '90s in college.

Some of you have design EDITORS? Good god.

 

[MNgremlin]

How do you set up your tabs to fit a MLB box in one column? Tonight I finally figured out that the EXPBox seems to fit better, but still can't quite get the tabs right.

 

[Gomer]

Depends on the column width. The right-align tab is your friend for the numbers, use left-align tab for names.

Our bosses kept shrinking paper size. Used to have an eight-column scoreboard. Now six after the latest shrink. You make it work.

 

[SBR]

One thing I'm still struggling with is photos. Not so much the how, but the why. Especially with resolutions and re-sizing. Also, does that all have to be done in Photoshop before importing the picture into Quark?

Funny I was just explaining this to someone in my shop last night. As usual, the answer is "it depends." With high-quality images, yes. On older versions of Quark for sure.

These days, most digital photos start off in a resolution of 72 DPI. At that resolution, the print size of a high-quality image might be something like 40 or 50 inches wide.

If you try to load a 50-inch wide image into a Quark document, Quark thinks you want to print a 50-inch wide photo. And that's bad. It gives your computer a headache because Quark uses up tons of RAM trying to create and draw a 50-inch preview on your screen, and it's especially deadly on an older computer without gobs of RAM.

Photoshop is much smarter, in that it will open your image at an acceptable viewing size without crashing your system. Then you go to image/image size and change the resolution to something like 200-350 dpi – that is the range most newspaper presses print at, so you don't need to go much higher.

When you change your image size, make sure "re-sample image" is off. You should be able to see how the DPI change also changes the print size of the image. If you go from 72 to 300, your 50-inch image will now be 12-inches wide. You haven't actually changed the image itself, you're just changing how the file interacts with your applications.

Save and import into Quark. Now Quark will see your image as 12 inches wide and it will be much happier.

Now, OTOH. If you're working with small, low-quality images, (file size under ~1MB), like a logo, or a small graphic (or a crappy photo you stole off some Web site), it's not that big a deal. You can usually just import those directly and just re-size them in Quark.

How do you set up your tabs to fit a MLB box in one column? Tonight I finally figured out that the EXPBox seems to fit better, but still can't quite get the tabs right.

What do you have trouble fitting? I use the EXP boxes as well. We have 1.75" columns, I use a 6.5 pt typeface with -5 tracking and everything fits pretty easily.

The only time I ever have trouble fitting something is when they put in stupid save/save op numbers for the closers. I just delete those.

 

[SBR]

I'll say yes to that but with a huge caveat: My shop is so bad I'm still using Quark 4.1.

I remember it well: the days when men were men and you could only Undo one step.