Layout Tips

In the past, the writer wrote and gave it to an editor to edit, then passed it to a designer with art training. Now, in the age of desktop publishing, one person often does all three--write, edit, and design. Here are some general tips for everyman design.

General Tips

Don't overuse lines, borders, and boxes. Since they're so easy to draw on a computer, people frequently go wild with them.
Don't do it on a computer just because you can. Like drawing a line, or reversing text, or using outlined text. If you do it, you need to have a reason.
Don't fill pages with too much type. It makes them look gray. Use white space, heavy versions of fonts for headlines, and solid graphics.
Use ample margins. It's easier to read if you have plenty of white space at the top, bottom, and sides.
Don't go crazy with clipart. Many church newsletters use a patchwork of clipart, with many different pictures from various styles thrown together. It's easy to scour the internet and find an image for just about anything. But a hodgepodge of image styles looks odd and cheap.
Don't use gaudy, colorful paper. It's appropriate sometimes--like in flyers--but not for common use. If you want people to read a lot of text on colored paper, make sure it's a light color--white, ivory, cream, or something like that.
Keep page design consistent from page to page. That includes paragraph indents, page margins, typestyles, spaces between columns, the use of lines and borders, and other elements.

Columns

The most readable column size is 35-45 characters. More than that, and the eye gets tired.
For 8x11 paper, three columns is ideal with 10-point type, two columns with 12-point type.
Don't put columns too close together. The larger the type, the more space needed between columns. Otherwise, the reader's eye will be tempted to jump right across the gap between columns and keep reading.
Vertical lines between columns provide a barrier to keep readers from jumping to the next column. A good-sized gap between columns will accomplish the same thing.

Photos

The most important picture should be bigger than the others.
A shadow behind a photo makes it pop off the page. It sort of adds another dimension. (A shadow can be nothing more than a black rectangle behind the photo, offset a little so that it shows from two--and only two--sides of the photo.)
The face of the main person in a photo should be at least one inch square. You don't usually get that in a large group photo.
Trend: photos are becoming more natural, less posed. Just look at what they're doing with high school graduation photos today. You don't see as many photos of people being handed a check, sitting behind a desk, talking on the phone--all those cliché-type photos. Now, photos show people looking relaxed, accessible, and interacting in some way with other people.

Layout Terms

Line art. All elements are solids--either solid black or solid white. There are no other colors, no shading, no grays (like you get with pencil drawings).
Halftones. This usually refers to black-and-white photos, which contain shades from light to dark. In desktop publishing, it's also called grayscale.
Screens. This is a shade of a color. It's easy to do in desktop publishing, and gives the illusion of more colors. For instance, you can print something in black and red, but you can get light, medium, and dark versions of those colors.
Reverse. The text or image appears in white against a dark background.

Designing in B&W

More documents are printed in black and white than in color. The photocopier has a lot to do with that. Keep these guidelines in mind when producing black-and-white publications.

Make sure you use enough solid black. Many B&W documents look gray, because they're filled with type and lack solid images. A page of a book, without pictures, looks more gray than black and white.
Black and white give the highest amount of contrast possible.
Black and white are the most readable colors.
Black is the least expensive ink to print.
The paper is the source of your white. There are many kinds of white--from snow white to buttercream to ivory.
You can screen black to get shades of gray, which add variety. 80% black is dark gray, 40% black looks dove gray, and 10% black is light gray.

Using Reversed Text

Use reversed text sparingly--preferably, just a few words. People don't like to read large amounts of reversed text, because it's more difficult to read. reverse

In reversing text, avoid type with small serifs. The serifs can get lost.

Make reversed text larger and bolder than surrounding text. For example, if you reverse one word in an 18-point headline, that word may appear to be a slightly smaller than the other words. So you might want to make the reversed text 19 point to offset the distortion.