Visual Communication

Editorial Design

Talya Shachar-Albocher

What is editorial design?

Editorial design is the collaboration between a writer and a designer to create an interesting piece of written material, sometimes punctuated by photography or other illustration. The best written plain English document won't be effective - or perhaps won't even be read - if it is badly designed. Clear design is just as important as good writing. readability - regards the writing of the material, how easy it is for the reader to understand the information contained. This is the job of the writer/editor. legibility - using design to make the material easy on the eye, aid reading flow and enhance the message.

Design: Abby Roc

Give Visual Cues

Help your reader find his way around the material by understanding hierarchy: the signposts throughout the text guide the reader. These are headers and subheads, bullets and initial capitals, even numbered lists or paragraphs. What's important? How can we tell? Size Weight -bold, italic Space around a line/half line space before or after a paragraph or heading Placement on the page Usage of lines and rules
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Breaking up areas of type

Long, grey "slabs" of type are like a long, boring speech -- people tend to tune out. The designer can break up the layout with spaces, short headings, lines, areas of color, illustrations and other images. These help the reader to easily find the section they want.
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Design: Ado Design

Room to breathe - using white space

White space is an important aid to legibility. Wide margins and plenty of room at the top and bottom of your page aid to focus the reader's attention without giving an uncomfortable crowded feeling. Wider margins used are also helpful in eliminating imbalance that can be caused by imperfect production if cutting isn't perfect, narrow margins are a recipe for disaster.

Design: Charlie Echo

White space doesn't need to be white:

Case study

The individual frame layout used here means the the space looks comfortably filled in spite of the fact that there is not that much content: there are margins between the page edges to the frames, and then again inside the frames to the beginning of the texts.
What problems can you pinpoint in this layout?

Legibility for long-running texts

Typeface (font) choice is probably the most important of all editorial design decisions. A typeface for long running texts (as opposed to headlines, subheads or callouts/pull-quotes) should be a serif font, not decorative. A typeface's "x-height" is another important factor in readability. The x-height is the height of letters such as x, a and e, which have no ascenders (like h) or descenders (like y), compared with capital letters or letters with ascenders. Typefaces with a larger x-height are easier to read than typefaces with a smaller x-height. Choose clear typefaces for your main text. Quirky or unusual typefaces can add character to covers and headings, but when used for text they will make your material much harder to read.

Negative text: Case study While the layout looks cool and the hierarchy is clear, if a reader would try to read the article through, he would feel uncomfortable. Laying out long texts in reverse -ie white text on black background- is a deterrent, and should be avoided. What could lighten the load in this case?
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Design: SP Design

Multi-column design
Keep in mind that maximum legibility runs at about 8-11 words (or 50-75 characters) per line. But also remember that context is everything. You will design differently for a book (long term reading, settling down with a large amount of material and giving it your full attention) than for a magazine (on-the-fly, whatever catches your eye, can be put down at a moment's notice) or an advertisement (maximum impact, grabbing attention, one-two words of info to pull the reader in).

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Using color
Color can be used as attention grabber, atmosphere creator/enhancer or hierarchy definer. Lines, areas and type are all possible instances. If you keep all these applications of color as possibilities in your mind as you are designing, your design will be more effective and evocative.

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Using photographs
Images placed into articles tell an additional story to that within the text. The photos or illustrations give atmosphere, explanation, and visual interest. How the photos are handles (cropping, clipping, duplicating, color manipulation, percent of page coverage) will affect the overall outlook of the material, and should be used in accordance with the message of the written article.

Design: Brad Keller

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Design: Lauren Swanson

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Text wraparound
The interaction between the text and the images should be handled with care. The designer wants the reader to be able to intuitively carry on reading the natural continuation of the text, and not find themselves confused as to where they should be looking next. Images with tight contoured shape wraparound can enhance the design greatly, but since they tend to create a feeling of less structure, they should be limited in usage.
Design: Kris Zabala

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Further interest

http://www.articlesbase.com/entrepreneurship-articles/restaurant-layout-follow-these-simpl http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_1_29/ai_58836541/ http://www.designtoday.net/printdesign/rules-of-color-in-print-design.html

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