Layout guide

 

Step-by-step process

1. Draw a line across the page one space from the header and around any ads that may be on the page
2. Decide which stories go on which page. Keep in mind stories that go together (similar topics & tones) and that fit on the page (shorter ones can fit on pages with ads)
3. Figure out which story is the most important on the page – usually one with the most relevance/highest stakes, etc.
4. Consider the elements of the story. (How many characters is it? Does it have a cutline? Deck? Photo/graphic? How long is the headline?)
5. What I do is start from the bottom of the page and count up until I hit the story’s character count. Then decide which element you want to adjust to make the count happen. Work in descending order of prominence (left to right, top to bottom on the page)
6. Lay out the elements & label them appropriately
7. Give the layout & story details to the PME (size of story, head, photo, any other elements)

Numbers & Sizes

• Each box on the page is 200 characters
• There are six lines in a box
• Each line in a box is (roughly) 33 characters
• A pullquote is at least two boxes (400 characters) and only one column wide
• Here’s a handy document to show you how many lines to allot for each headline:

Headlines

There are three things that define headlines:

1. Their order on the page
2. The number of columns they span
3. The number of lines the text spans

Start by deciding which story has prominence. You’ll find the templates for headlines in the Land of Love server, under templates. On the template, you’ll see four lines of text – these are the different styles that mark prominence on the page. Fill in the text on whichever style matches the prominence and delete the rest.

It’s important to consider how much text will be in the headline; for example, laying out a two column single head gives about 20 characters to work with for the headline – not a lot!

Decks

Decks aren’t always included in a story, but when they are they’re usually to incorporate information that is also important but not the leading piece of information for the headline. They go directly beneath the head. Example – the grey text below:

Lines

• Draw one line after the line below the top header and around any ads on the page
• Leave one line between every element on the page, so a line after headlines, photos, pullquotes, and ends of stories
• EXCEPT FOR: photos with a cutline and headlines with a deck. The cutline/deck is attached to the photo/headline with no space between them. There is still a space between the cutline/deck and the story, though

 

Photos & Graphics

• Most photos will be horizontal and at least three columns wide
  • Sometimes for more square photos they can be two, but usually it ends up making the photo too small to matter
  • Graphics can be horizontal and vertical
  • Try to keep visuals away from ads so we can maintain a distinction between content and ads
  • All photos featuring a person should have a cutline identifying who they are
  • When laying out visuals, we leave a box for them and draw an ‘x’ through the box after labelling it

 

Pullquotes

• Pullquotes are quotes from the body of the story that are stylized differently from the rest of the text
• If a quote is particularly poignant/relevant/sums the story up well/gives a good indication of the stakes, use it
• Pullquotes take up at least two boxes and should have a gutter around them
• Try to keep them short

Stories

• When laying out stories, give the character count at the end and direct arrows down the columns to indicate the story flow
• Try to have the text of the story flow intuitively – pay attention to where the reader’s eye will go!
• Any awkward spaces should be fixed. For example, don’t have two lines of text sandwiched between a headline and an ad

 

Opinions

• When laying out an ops page, pay attention to the headshots at the start of every opinion piece
• Leave one box for the headshot, then one blank line afterwards

 

Naming

When we drop stories and their elements to Front Office/Comp Room Drop, we title them with the following information in this order: page number, prominence_element_slug

Here are some examples:

• 08a_head_pascal
• 10b_story_hoco
• 03c_pullquote_huron
• 04a_photo_chrw

Slugs are one-word descriptors of what the story is about so we know which element to add to which story. For example, “USC”. Don’t give two stories the same slug, though

If we ever end up jumping stories, make a note of it on both pages and name them as follows:

01a_story_usc
03b_story_usc

 

Tips & Tricks

 

• The order of story elements can vary from piece to piece, but try not to have two headlines next to each other. You can see an example below:

See how the headlines are in opposition to each other? We distinguish them by style but it still looks a little awkward. Instead, try to change up the order, like this:

So on one side you have headline-story-photo (way at the bottom of the page – not shown) and on the other you have photo-headline-story. Headlines must always be either the first or second element, but photos and stories can be in any order. *Note: Personal preference, but I don’t like photos beneath stories if we can at all avoid it.

• There are a number of ways you can fiddle with a story to get it to the right length on the page

• To make the story bigger:
  • Make the visual/headline bigger
  • Add a pullquote or deck/cutline
  • Add another visual (an infographic for instance)
  • AS A LAST RESORT (especially for an awkward space) add a house ad
• To make the story smaller:
  • Make the visual or headline smaller
  • Cut out unnecessary characters
  • AS A LAST RESORT (especially if your story is way over the character count) take out the visual

• Try to stay away from having a page that is too text-heavy. There should be at least one visual per page, and in an ideal world, every story has a visual.

• Try to keep layouts more vertical than horizontal

• Now that you know the rules, screw the rules. No, seriously – play around and have some fun with it! Make stories 3.5 columns, add multiple photos to a story, have the text wrap around different elements – and more. It makes for a more interesting paper to read and lay out! I’ve put some examples of layouts from previous years that are helpful below.

 

Layout examples

 

Single pages

This is a good example of a standard 3 column/two column story layout with one on the bottom. Notice how the first priority story has the visual element so the reader’s eye is drawn towards it, and you can tell easily which text goes with which story. Also notice how the stories fit around the ad – the body of the story cuts off with the ad, and the bottom story is snug against the ad as well.

 

 

Here you have a story with a headline going across the full story while the text is only in two columns. Good for taking up the bottom of a page.

 

 

I tend to like these layouts that have the text wrapping around a photo. They’re good for stories taking up half a page, and you can have the side text be one or two columns. But be careful that the text always stays on the left-hand side, otherwise it can be confusing for the reader to know where to start.

 

 

Here’s a story with the photo spanning the full five columns and the headline underneath it. Head could’ve gone above or below the photo – either one would have been fine. Notice the text above the sudoku box; a good rule of thumb is to have at least two boxes of text to avoid an awkward bit of text between elements – had the sudoku box been much bigger, we would’ve had to have done something else.

 

 

Notice how there are four columns across the page instead five – it helps to keep the two photos up top the same size. We could’ve moved the photos around a bit, but at the risk of disrupting the flow of the different parts of the story (note the dots; alternatively, they may be subheadings for longer-form stories)

 

 

Here’s a full-page story that doesn’t feel like one, mostly because how the visuals divide the page up nicely. You have the ‘header’ image, the four ‘process’ images, an infographic on the side, and a larger ‘ingredients’ photo. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are two examples of layouts that use the full page and incorporate the headline into the photo itself. Usually good for images that have a lot of dead space to them in order to put the headline there, it also keeps the text in a pleasing dimension. The left layout took advantage of the two columns next to the ad by using an additional photo, and the layout on the right made a collage with varying photo sizes for the bottom footer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally really like this layout because it once again takes advantage of dead space in photos and wraps the text around the balls in a visually interesting manner. The additional use of the three photos also serves to disrupt the page and keep it from feeling too text-heavy while being mindful of the dimensions of the original photo. The headline is also incorporated in with the photo, though the deck can be a little hard to read when laying over the sleeve, so keep that in mind for these kinds of layouts. Additionally, you can see an example of a pullquote above the last photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s another example of a layout that breaks the mold a little bit. See how the woman’s head in the photo goes beyond the border of the photo and into the headline? It really takes advantage of the movement of the photo to make a memorable layout – it feels like she’s fully jumping off the page.

 

 

 

Centre spreads

Centre spreads are a little different when it comes to layout. You have two pages to play with, but you also have to keep in mind where the fold of the page is, and 10 columns instead of just five. Here are some examples of centre spreads that use a variety of elements to get their point across.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This layout works by instilling a sense of a theme across the two pages (note the border and the postcards) while also keeping the text uniform and making it easy to find the information. If I’d had more time before the print deadline, I might’ve tried to keep the cards off of the centre fold, but as it is it’s bending the photo instead of the text, so it’s not as bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This layout takes advantage of the ten columns by putting a large header image across both pages, but divides the text into the two stories. Note how the photo is the same size as the text on both sides and how the headline is in the dead space of the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This layout is heavy on the text & graphics with few visuals, but the colours help. But be mindful of where the reader’s eye is going – very important with these layouts.

 

 

Magazine

One of the most important things to keep in mind with magazine layouts is that they often span across a number of pages, but don’t use the same kind of centre spread style as newspaper layouts do. They’re usually characterized by larger photos and more colour, as you’ll see throughout the examples below, and the visuals tie into different parts of the story.

 

Here’s a fairly standard layout for magazines. You can play around a little more with the column sizes and even go ‘beyond’ the border of the page, but the purple banners link the story across both pages. It’s a bit text-heavy, I’d probably break it up with a pullquote in the middle, but altogether it’s pleasing.

 

 

Here’s a visual-heavy layout that has the photos corresponding with different parts of the story as it goes across the pages. It also uses relatively little text considering how much you could cram onto the pages, but it works. As well, we’ve seen the way the text wraps around the hat’s brim in previous layouts, but they can be particularly effective in magazine formats with stunning visuals.

 

Here’s an example of a magazine layout that shows the text adapting to a visual. It’s also relatively text-heavy, but the striking feature here is how the pullquote is distinct from the ones we use in newspaper layouts.

 

 

This is an example of a magazine layout that does take advantage of the centre spread. The photo takes up the entire page, but because there is so much space around it, it’s relatively intuitive to see the text in the empty space while using the colour scheme from the photo to tie it together.

 

 

Front covers

While usually the multimedia editors’ responsibility, it’s helpful to have a vision of what striking front covers can look like to drive the kinds of photos you request from them in turn. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the front cover needs to work both unfolded and folded  – so when readers look at it folded on the stands, they’re not getting half of the picture. Here are some examples of strong front covers that work on multiple levels that are based on photos and graphics.

 

In my opinion, this is one of the strongest front covers we’ve had. The tone of the story comes through with the dramatic lighting, and the white text across the black background really makes it stand out. Looking at the shadow of the hands over the keys is a subtle effect that looks threatening enough to match the simple yet effective headline. If you fold the paper in half, you can see that the front cover works as only the top half as well as expanded. Finally, the bottom half of the cover works as an effective graphic as well as doubling as the space for the deck, while the green text adds a pop of colour while being recognizable as what a layman would think of when thinking about someone trying to hack into computers.

 

It should go without saying, but the photo for the front cover should be vertical and a high enough resolution to be crisp and clear. Here, the action in the photo is vertical as well, and the outstretched arms provide a frame for the text. Note how the headline is also above the centre fold – it gets across the essential information and the top half of the photo that works independently of the bottom half.

 

 

Here’s a front cover photo that gets across the essential information across the top while being dynamic against the relatively plain background with the help of the graphically added splatter effect.