OUDG403 - Study Task 03

For this study task we were looking at the layout and composition of newspapers and magazines to see how they convey a message. We got split into small groups of 5 and were given a headline. Ours was "Mario Balotelli Shirt Swap Scandal", and we had to design a layout for a newspaper that would best suit this story.

I firstly wrote down some initial notes of things that we discussed within our group. We looked at different news papers and how they laid out their sports pages, and quickly found that there were lots of pictures and less emphasis on the body text. 

We decided on one or two columns for the text, and two columns for a large image. We also thought that the headline should take up a large amount of space, as it will grab the attention of the passionate fans. It has to be serious, as the target audience take the sport very seriously too. We came up with a rough copy of a layout and grid system:

We have a 4 column grid with 2 columns for text. We thought that 2 columns is enough as people will just want to know the facts about the incident and have a large visual. We then made a neater copy once we had all agreed, and made a better version of the grid which is shown in red:

After that, we made a few notes on the page showing what other decisions we had made and why:

These include the type of font we would use and why. We researched into existing newspapers and found that the majority use Futura Condensed Bold for their headline, as it grabs attention, it is legible and also quite versatile as it can be used in many colours and sizes. For the body text, the majority of papers use Franklin Gothic. This is a sans serif typeface, which gets the point across with no decrease in legibility. It is simple and clear, but also has a robust and modern feel to it. 

The kerning in newspapers is also very wide, and the tracking is large. I think this is so that the legibility is increased and also to fill up more space (if there is a small word count it will all fit into the columns).

I have learnt a lot from this session as I have never looked into layout and editorial design before. I think this will give me a good starting point for my next task for Studio Brief 3, looking into newspapers and seeing what the layout and design decisions can say about a story and what the tone of voice is etc.