The Importance of the Acronym

Hey the bbc's h2g2 linked to my "What internet acronym are you" quizilla which was made in July 2004!



And I quote "It's so bad that this link warrants a code red emergency disclaimer regarding myself/The Post/h2g2/the BBC and anyone else (including the person who programmed it probably) not being responsible whatsoever for whatever results you will get if you choose to take that test..."

Footnote: "1 I still can't understand how my Internet Acronym could be 'ASL' after the very carefully chosen answers I gave there... Hmmmph!!!"

More Newspaper Design

Following up on the last post about what your newspaper can teach you about design: Smashing Magazine has a ton of photos of Award Winning Newspaper Designs.

What your daily newspaper can teach you about design

While everyone feels the newspaper industry is dying, we can still learn a lot from the way they are designed. Part of my duties as a designer is layout out newspaper. I've learned a lot that has helped me with other projects ever since I've started on that. So maybe these tips will help you just a little bit.

Newspapers love bold headlines. A lot of "bad" designs are cluttered. There's too much going on. There isn't any emphasis or too many things are emphasized. The idea of a headline, subhead and body copy can extend to many forms of design. Try keeping the body copy consistent in size and type style. The headline might even be in the same font. A headline is an opportunity to use a second font, but ask yourself why you think this is appropriate and be critical of the results.

Photos and captions. Newspapers often have to deal with a variety of shapes of photos and fit them into various spaces. In the past few months that I've been doing a few days of newspaper layouts each week, the more I see that the layout is a puzzle. Everything has to fit just perfectly. It's more challenging than it may at first appear. On top of that, you don't want the captions don't want to get mixed in with the body copy. Using a rule, box or just enough white space can separate the caption text from body text Keeping photos near their headlines/copy is one tip. Another is to give a lot of space around them. This can work for all kinds of design objects in your layout.

There's a lot more that you might learn from newspaper design. Look at some strongly branded and well thought out newspapers. Ask what works and what doesn't

Latest in Publication Design

I've posted pages from my latest publication designs. These were inserted in newspapers across Maryland. They're printed on varying qualities of newsprint depending on the publication. The Spring Home publication featured bright colors and spring themes while Spring Preview is more of a retro design.

The goal of any of these publication designs is to make it unified. What you don't see here are the ad pages. When you have the pages of your document mixed with varying ad designs, its pretty important to have it clear what is an editorial layout and what is an ad. One way of accomplishing this is picking a set of typefaces and colors and sticking to it. Too many type styles can create cluttered and confused designs. Picking one or maybe two is best. I'd say one style of type with a lot of options (swash, bold, italic, varying weights) works best unless you have a very good reason to use a second. As for choosing colors, that takes a lot of observation. Look around and see what works and what doesn't.

You Like It Unformal

Manolo for the Men is one of my favorite blogs. The text is always so short and to the point. The pictures are priceless and demonstrative. I ramble on too much and am too formal here. Take the post about the sucky new polo brand's logo. Izzy is brash; I love it!

Here's a cool link: Luis Santi Jr.