A1
So. Today was Day1 of A1.
It feels so much more free than doing the State front. For those of you who do not or have not ever read the Kennebec Journal, the State front (B1) has a 4-inch tall ad on the bottom every day. This combined with the nameplate leaves me with roughly a square to design in. As you may or may not know, it's not easy to make a square interesting. That being said, I think I've done pretty well at it. Anyway, A1 means no giant ad. It also means more readily available art/graphics/options, so I can really shine and show them what (I think) I'm made of.
The other thing I thought about as I drove home tonight (during the most gorgeous amazing Harvest Moon ever) is how exciting and also sort of scary it is that in about four hours, thousands of people will see what I spend all of last night working on. Nerve-wracking! I take some solace in the fact that few people who read the paper probably know/care about/notice design when they read. But as far as I'm concerned, that's sort of what makes it cool.
My contribution to the newspaper is subtle and under the radar. Editing goes unnoticed unless I fail. Design is subliminal at best - enticing the reader to check out this story or that one and making their romp through the newspaper easier and more pleasurable in the smallest ways: breaking up text so your eye doesn't have to work as hard; making sure that no mid-word jumps disrupt your flow while you're reading about Paul LePage's soaring polling and fund-raising leads; meticulously aligning text, images, graphics and rules to fractions of points to ensure nothing about the page jars the reader. Of course all of that is only true if I've done it well, which I guess we'll find out tomorrow.
On that note: While I'm sure my first crack at A1 is not the greatest the KJ has ever seen, (you should know though, that the KJ has a smaller staff and fewer "real" designers or photographers than the BDN or Press Herald, which means fewer photos and less time to design graphics or stylish Eric Zellz-esque packages), I feel I must have done pretty OK because they are changing the schedule so I can it again tomorrow.
It feels so much more free than doing the State front. For those of you who do not or have not ever read the Kennebec Journal, the State front (B1) has a 4-inch tall ad on the bottom every day. This combined with the nameplate leaves me with roughly a square to design in. As you may or may not know, it's not easy to make a square interesting. That being said, I think I've done pretty well at it. Anyway, A1 means no giant ad. It also means more readily available art/graphics/options, so I can really shine and show them what (I think) I'm made of.
The other thing I thought about as I drove home tonight (during the most gorgeous amazing Harvest Moon ever) is how exciting and also sort of scary it is that in about four hours, thousands of people will see what I spend all of last night working on. Nerve-wracking! I take some solace in the fact that few people who read the paper probably know/care about/notice design when they read. But as far as I'm concerned, that's sort of what makes it cool.
My contribution to the newspaper is subtle and under the radar. Editing goes unnoticed unless I fail. Design is subliminal at best - enticing the reader to check out this story or that one and making their romp through the newspaper easier and more pleasurable in the smallest ways: breaking up text so your eye doesn't have to work as hard; making sure that no mid-word jumps disrupt your flow while you're reading about Paul LePage's soaring polling and fund-raising leads; meticulously aligning text, images, graphics and rules to fractions of points to ensure nothing about the page jars the reader. Of course all of that is only true if I've done it well, which I guess we'll find out tomorrow.
On that note: While I'm sure my first crack at A1 is not the greatest the KJ has ever seen, (you should know though, that the KJ has a smaller staff and fewer "real" designers or photographers than the BDN or Press Herald, which means fewer photos and less time to design graphics or stylish Eric Zellz-esque packages), I feel I must have done pretty OK because they are changing the schedule so I can it again tomorrow.