I HAD THE PLEASURE of working with Sam Lucero last year as we redesigned The Compass, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. Sam has submitted the page below, with the quick note: “I’m sending a page for critique. It’s a cover page to a special issue we published in February.” I’ve placed some brief comments below the page.
FROM ED: I assume we’re trying to illustrate here that the church is three equally important things: ritual, community and education. And that’s OK. But I still want to see one dominant photo here (I vote for the Mass pic). Also, I would have considered moving the edges of the tan box in a bit so the edges of the photos (perhaps not the text) could have gone past the edges of the box, giving a greater sense of depth to the package. One last point: Did you consider feathering the edges of the tan box? Sometimes that can deliver greater visual impact to a package.
How about the rest of you? Your thoughts? Comments? Criticisms?
Ed Henninger’s Blog 
I agree totally with using one good dominant photo. The Mass photo is pretty standard stuff, but the photos at odd angles and shaded is the sort of thing one might do for an inside feature. This must be your annual market-saturation piece and I understand that you’d want it to appeal to a wide crowd, but I think you’d be better served with one knock-out photo. Or go a totally different way, and do an engaging “regular” front page.
I agree that 1 dominant photo might have been the way to go, but I think the current layout could benefit from the adding of a little more depth as Ed said.
I would’ve bumped the top right photo over to the left a little so that all 3 photos overlap instead of just the 2 on the right. That gap between the top 2 photos bothers my eyeballs.