AS MANY OF YOU KNOW, this blog until recently was focused on my commenting on page submissions from reader/subscribers. After thinking it over for some time, I decided to take the blog in a different direction.
But occasionally I receive page that’s just too different to not post. This is one of them. The page comes from Kristin Coker at the Times and Democrat in Orangeburg, SC.
FROM KRISTIN: It has been awhile…I have a page that I hope you will like because you inspired it. I do know how much you like negative space. For this page we had a few pictures that were kind of ho-hum. Thankfully, the page was faith-inspired and I loved the headline my editor gave me to work with. It gave me the idea to form a cross on the page and to leave everything else white. A few people thought I lost my marbles when they saw it run off the press—until they got that it formed a cross. So hopefully, everyone else will get the idea and like it, too? What do you think?
FROM ED: I think it’s different and appealing. Not too sure about the use of the swirly-thingies above the headline, though. I think they may call too much attention to themselves. A question: Why are the headline and drop head in purple? Another question: What does “anchoring” have to do with the story? Not sure I get the meaning. Those points aside, I like it!
How about the rest of you? Would you have had the moxie to try this? Would your editor/publisher have hyperventilated about all the negative space?
Jump in with your comments.
I LIKE!
I get the swirly-thingies; they pull my eye to the headlines. Purple: a liturgical color used to symbolize Advent and Lent, hence Jesus’ ministry time; His teachings. (Good choice, Kristin!) And yes, my publisher would hyperventilate because space is money.
Thank you Karen, you are right about both points. And to answer Ed’s question about anchoring in the headline, then I guess I should have put the jump page with the front too, because it was a term the faith teacher had used at the end of the story, which was on the jump page.
Very well done! Excellent choice of headline font. The swirly-thingies and the subhead spacing work very well to create an ornate cross. Again, well done.
Our publishers would have wanted us to put ads down either side of the copy. -sigh-
I like this quite a bit, especially for a “Sunday Magazine” section. And unless it’s a Christmas pageant or a well-organized VBS, church pages have a reputation of being a pain in the cross to lay out.
That being said, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do this. Our publisher HATES negative space of any kind, which frequently leads to disputes.
“Why is that space so big?”
“It’ just a three-pica space to offset the large feature photo from the rest of the page. It looks better.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Trust me, it looks better.”
*grumble* *grumble* *grumble*
*walks away*
I know exactly what you’re talking about. For years, I worked for a managing editor who was visually brain dead. To him, negative space was just space that hadn’t been filled yet…with words!