DESIGN BASICS BY VICTORIA FRANK
DESIGN BASICS
There are a few simple rules to remember when designing a spread.
1. Always design from inspiration. Never open a blank spread and just start dropping boxes and hope that it works out. Look through magazines and newspapers and online ads for design formats to push the limit.
2. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS FOLLOW THE STYLE SHEET. Nothing else needs to be said for this.
3. When you are designing, make sure and design so that the dom is the biggest, then sec, then tert, etc. You have to scale your pictures, like the text is scaled according to the style sheet.
4. Know what a happy box is and use it. When you zoom in a TON in between the columns (which should be set at 0p3) you can draw a box (holding down shift for a perfect box) the width of one column. This is a happy box. While all packages need to be separated by one column when designing, they also need to be separated by a happy box on all sides. This is to ensure that when the page prints, packages are distinguishable from one another.
5. It is ok to bleed photos off of the page, just make sure that they bleed all the way. Drag them all the way to the corner past the pink line in order to ensure that they will print off the page the way that you intend.
6. NOTHING GOES IN THE GUTTER. This is crucial. No one wants to buy a yearbook where their face is warped because it was in the gutter and the pages printed weird. Pictures can, and should, bleed over and into the gutter, but make sure there are never any faces there. Or any words, people like to read the full caption and not a distorted version if the page is bent.
1. Always design from inspiration. Never open a blank spread and just start dropping boxes and hope that it works out. Look through magazines and newspapers and online ads for design formats to push the limit.
2. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS FOLLOW THE STYLE SHEET. Nothing else needs to be said for this.
3. When you are designing, make sure and design so that the dom is the biggest, then sec, then tert, etc. You have to scale your pictures, like the text is scaled according to the style sheet.
4. Know what a happy box is and use it. When you zoom in a TON in between the columns (which should be set at 0p3) you can draw a box (holding down shift for a perfect box) the width of one column. This is a happy box. While all packages need to be separated by one column when designing, they also need to be separated by a happy box on all sides. This is to ensure that when the page prints, packages are distinguishable from one another.
5. It is ok to bleed photos off of the page, just make sure that they bleed all the way. Drag them all the way to the corner past the pink line in order to ensure that they will print off the page the way that you intend.
6. NOTHING GOES IN THE GUTTER. This is crucial. No one wants to buy a yearbook where their face is warped because it was in the gutter and the pages printed weird. Pictures can, and should, bleed over and into the gutter, but make sure there are never any faces there. Or any words, people like to read the full caption and not a distorted version if the page is bent.
HOW TO
The most important thing to remember is that content drives design. You can mock up a spread, but until you have content there is no way that you can finalize design. The pictures determine the location of the copy (people in pictures should be looking at the copy always) and the copy determines the location of the headline and subhead. You also have to keep in mind that the dominant package of the spread cannot be in the same place as the dominant package in the spread before or after it in any circumstance. There should be a combination of horizontal and vertical dominant packages and also a combination of traditional and alternate coverage.
When you are starting with a blank spread, after you have looked at the previous and next spread's design, find inspiration for what you are planning on doing with the content that you are given. Design the dom package first, then go down in levels of coverage. Make sure that the levels are all scaled i.e.. the dom is the biggest and the quat is the smallest.
When you are starting with a blank spread, after you have looked at the previous and next spread's design, find inspiration for what you are planning on doing with the content that you are given. Design the dom package first, then go down in levels of coverage. Make sure that the levels are all scaled i.e.. the dom is the biggest and the quat is the smallest.