mario garcia
Shapes of information There is nothing complicated about the shapes, or modules, in which information may be presented on a page. This applies equally to newspapers, magazines, brochures, and newsletters. Usually, a designer has a photograph or illustration, a headline, and text. Those are the basic components of the storytelling process. And if readers could have a dialog with designers, they would say that their preference is a simple one: photo or illustration, headline and text. In its purest form, that is not difficult to do, and it makes the most sense: the reader first looks at the photo to grab the first message of the story, then reads the headline, the caption, the headline, and if interest remains, the text. Two other shapes that are part of the same type of packaging are:
The U-shape: With a horizontal headline across the page (let us say across six columns), the text forms the shape of the letter U around the photo or illustration. The L-shape: This is similar to above, but the text ends under the photo, without going up into a sixth column.
These shapes do the job well and should be part of every designer’s must have templates.
88
pure design
Think U and L: As much as a designer may wish to imagine new shapes to present information on a page, the fact is that the basic shapes of the letters U and L are still the best solutions. We see here how these structures work for our projects with Listin Diario of the Dominican Republic and El Pais of Cali, Colombia. Shapes are part of the papers’ style, adding visual continuity, and permitting designers to spend more time in the selection of images than in the inventing of new shapes.
89