A NEWBIE TO THE BLOG, Mary offers up three pages for our review and comment. Please don’t let me be the only one who offers her feedback. Get in here with your thoughts and your suggestions!
FROM MARY:
Hi Ed!
Mary Kincy from The Courier in Russellville, Ark., here. I was priviledged to attend your recent workshop in Little Rock.
Here are a few pages completed by our desk in recent days. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Thanks a million,
Mary
FROM ED:
1. Good to see that you’re setting all text flush left—on this and other pages. That must make life a lot easier for you.
2. Your nameplate really needs fixing. It’s got a ’60s look to it. Seems un-serious.
3. Love the lead photo…and the play you gave it.
4. Would like to see more spacing between packages.
5. Don’t like the side caption on the residence hall photo. Cropping some of the floor would have allowed you to place the caption underneath.
6. Any reason why the residence hall photo is tilted within its frame? This looks like a fad and an affectation. Maybe for a magazine or a feature front, but it doesn’t seem to work here.
7. Lots of air in the rail column on the left. Seems to me you could make better use of this valuable space. Have you considered giving that space back to the top of the page…maybe putting some of that material down next to the ad?
FROM ED:
1. Not sure the “Kooky…” headline face goes well with this package. Stencil type with pix of kids? Nah.
2. Cute pix but might have been better had you aligned the right photo with the others. There’s more floor in the right pic.
3. Despite the pullout, the story looks long. And…it jumps!
4. Not sure where you’re getting your colors. The orange, the purple. Did you try to grab those out of the photos?
5. Don’t like the screen behind the Simpson column.
6. Overall, the page is just uninspired. Perhaps doing a cutout on the middle photo…and then running it HUGE(!!) might have helped. The page just feels as though it were assembled…not designed.
FROM ED:
1. You need to decide which is the lead photo on this page. These pix are almost exactly the same size. One photo must be dominant.
2. Both briefs seem a bit long. I try to keep two-col-wide briefs to no more than about two inches deep. These aren’t briefs…they’re longs.
3. Wrapping the bottom brief around the ads is a no-no. This kind of wrap can make it appear at first that the ads are elements that somehow go with the brief. Next time, place the ads next to each other in that two-column hole, and then run the brief down to them.
4. Looks like a slow wire news day, what with the shuttle story being the lead and then giving all that space to the re-enacment package.
I’d offer this alternative for the kooky clothing and it works pretty well imho for those long ap lifestyles features. Take the product art, they generally have three or four beside the featurish art with the story. Use that art to anchor some breakouts that incorporate capsules of some of the main sections. You can get the feature down to 14-17 inches with three of four entry points that are 2-3 inches long.
I am curious why World is uppercase as a brief package header and lowercase in the page flag?
I think the kid in the middle of the “Kooky” story would’ve been nice cutout and bigger in between the other two photos. I also agree with Ed about the color choices for this package. They don’t seem to fit. The story doesn’t look like it goes with the graphics on top with the orange rules separating them.
The front page is very hard to look at. Maybe it is the stretched nameplate and the weird angles of both photos. I really like your follow us on Twitter and Facebook graphic. It goes nicely with the Spotlight on package. I also like the centered headlines and bylines.
On your Nation & world page, should World be capitalized? Being nitpicky, but it is a little visually distracting. I think we’ve done the same thing by wrapping stories around ads. I better make sure everyone here knows it is a “no-no.”
I was wondering about the two ads on the last page aren’t they floating in the middle of a page in between the weather and the briefs? Couldn’t they be moved to another page? Also, I was curious about the obit names on the rail on page one does a funeral home pay for that? Overall I had seen this paper about six months ago and can tell they are working to make it better. Finally a comment. Several papers in Arkansas use this same nameplate I’ve always disliked it and wish someone would fix them all.
The whole front page is stretched horizontally somehow; not sure what happened. We are, at Ed’s suggestion, finally taking the plunge on exploring changes to our flag. Problem is its all over our building, cars, etc.
The rationale on “world” not being capitalized in that flag is that we don’t capitalize anything other than proper nouns after the first word in a series. You’ll notice that in our headlines. Perhaps this would be a place to break from that, though, since it seems to bother the eye for many of you.
Thanks for the suggestions!