Design thread

[JRoyal]

I can see where your coming from to a point, but I also know this: He's got to work with a cut-to-front column and still keep the page from getting cluttered. Too many gadgets, too many incentives, and the page will easily get cluttered, especially since one side of the page is going to be a column every day. A good designer knows when to add something extra and when to keep things clean. That's something I have problems with myself at times. Chiaramonte does a good job of keeping things balanced.

 

[SCEditor]

I don't think his stuff outside his centerpiece are all that plain, but I do think that perhaps his centerpiece is often so colorful and dominant that it mays you think the rest of his stuff is plain.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Here's one I think is good.

 

[penguin]

OK Rusty, I'll play.

Solid looking front. That's a lot of red. I'm assuming the type is more readable than it appears posted here. I don't like the frame around the package.

Not a big fan of scores in a headline; I'd rather drop that deck and get that into a subhead.

You think the prep art would work better in between the two stories and maybe move the fact box or whatever that is to the left side of the Cougars story instead of the right? Just a thought.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

Boy Rusty, I bet the pressroom was loving you that night! Reverse type is a really tricky thing to get down, or at least it has been for me. The orange probably doesn't add enough to the package to justify it -- you could have done a frame around it and left it black-on-white and it still would have been fine.

I do really dig the headline. Wonder how many people got it?

 

[Sxysprtswrtr]

One more. Wish more people would look at this thread.

I'm saddened by the fact this thread got relegated to an area where few people tread anymore. It used to be one of my favorite places, but now it's an afterthought.

 

[RedCanuck]

His centerpieces are fantastic, as are his single-page covers. But on the regular fronts, his pages are very boring and grey outside the CP.

I agree with you. I was looking at the package on sportsdesigner.com and I was thinking the CP always stood out like a sore thumb. They're obviously creative and colourful, but they don't seem to fit the rest of the package - it's almost like an ad or a design feature strictly for the sake of a design feature.

The few pages he had which were ordinary fronts with the Sabres' lead and no special packages looked okay to me though.

 

[JayFarrar]

I can't figure out how to make this any bigger. Still, any critiques appreciated.

I would have ditched the second story and ran the column the full length of the rail, and maybe kept it from jumping. I don't see the need from the screen in the CP, stretched the copy out a little bit more and moved the series records to the inside.
But I think it was a good effort, and I really like how you did the coaches mugs with the pull quotes.
Just me, but I like it when you have a keys to the game breakout box, all the info from the game quick. But that's just me and I also assume that the page is game-day coverage, not a follow. I could be wrong.

 

[Irishcheesehead]

If you want a personal critique of some of these pages, I am starting a design critique on another thread to get people sharing ideas, etc.

thanks

 

[Chi City 81]

Here's tonight's NCAA centerpiece. I had all sorts of crazy ideas, but was limited by art, so I decided to keep it simple.

 

[SCEditor]

Could be just me, but there appears to be a lot of space between your headlines and your stories. I could park my car between them.

I like the CP, but those logos in the break-out boxes are pretty big. I might have scaled it down a little bit on the breakout boxes and gone a little wider on the Tennessee and VaTech stories.

Somebody smarter than me could probably answer this, but shouldn't the Jimmie Johnson cutline have been at the bottom. I was always taught that your white space should be trapped away from the page, not into it.

P.S. You can't do anything about this, but I truly think the question mark in Impact is the most hideous thing I've ever seen. I absolutely hate it.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Here's tonight's NCAA centerpiece. I had all sorts of crazy ideas, but was limited by art, so I decided to keep it simple.

I think it looks fine. My only concern is the use of reverse type over black. Personally, I try not to use reverse type unless it is a sufficiently big story, and in my opinion, the announcing of NCAA Tourney brackets doesnt qualify. I think it would have looked just as good with black text on a white background. But overall, I think it is a fine page.

 

[Chi City 81]

Finally had plenty of art, so I went wild. The background didn't translate well from the PDF conversion, but it's a bunch of UVa. fans cheering at Friday night's game, run at 15-percent opacity. It did translate into print. Does it work, or is it too busy?

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Finally had plenty of art, so I went wild. The background didn't translate well from the PDF conversion, but it's a bunch of UVa. fans cheering at Friday night's game, run at 15-percent opacity. It did translate into print. Does it work, or is it too busy?

Personally, I think it's a bit too busy. But it certainly isn't far off.

My suggestions, for what they're worth (which likely isn't much): I would get rid of the Virginia cutout of player No. 2. He seems smaller than the others, and he's kinda hidden behind the guy that I assume is a coach or something. Among the other three player cutouts, I would have placed the one in the center a little higher than the other two, making him the central figure of the piece. Maybe made him a little bigger than the others, too, while maybe making the coach a bit smaller.

I think that would address what I view as my biggest concern -- that none of those cutouts is dominant. My eye kinda bounces around them all, not really drawn to any lead. I think eliminating player No. 2, shrinking the coach a bit and making the player in the center bigger and higher up would solve that.

But like I said, I'm no Vince Chiaramonte, so take it for what it's worth.

 

[Chi City 81]

OK, busy night for me (laid out 11 pages). But our photographer made my job really easy on the front page with his shot. This is my first attempt at a photo cover. What do you think?

 

[Beef03]

Going through this thread makes me even angrier that i work at a tab.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

OK, busy night for me (laid out 11 pages). But our photographer made my job really easy on the front page with his shot. This is my first attempt at a photo cover. What do you think?

I like that a lot. How did your photographer feel about you running text and stuff over his picture? Ours get angry when we do anything but run their photos as submitted, to the point that I've been chewed out several times for making cutouts or running text over them like you did.

But I like it.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

OK, busy night for me (laid out 11 pages). But our photographer made my job really easy on the front page with his shot. This is my first attempt at a photo cover. What do you think?

Thoughts:

* I don't have a problem with putting copy on text, if it doesn't interfere with the focal point of the photo. Problem is, your subhed (or whatever it's called since it's before the hed) gets lost in there because it's too small to stand out against a busy backdrop. Hed is fine, though I'm not a big fan of the bang -- it would have worked without the mark and centered, but that's just me.

* Photo's great. It makes him look like he's doing the septuple head spin from that Futurama episode where Fry looks for his seven-leaf clover. Nice trick. The text to the right is a bit much -- center the photo, run a two-to-three inch horizontal block along the bottom, mayhaps? But then you run the risk of losing the car.

* How did this print? Were the presses your way able to replicate it well?

* Slightly off-topic: I assume there's more gutter space than I'm seeing, right? I noticed it with the flag -- I gather it doesn't actually touch the edge of the page.

 

[Chi City 81]

Yeah, it reproduced perfectly. It damned well should have since our company is fond of pointing out often that they've spent $22 million on the new presses (neglecting to mention that it's used, and the computer system that came with it sucks; but I digress).

And yeah, there is a gutter. The way InDesign likes to PDF these things, there just isn't one on the computer copy.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

I saw something similar to this done in Atlanta.

The main headline reads: Blowout or Poor Sportsmanship: Where Is The Dividing Line?