Sage Reference

Encyclopedia of Journalism

Author: Christopher H. Sterling

© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Newspaper design, as a specialized area of practice, is a relatively recent addition to the journalism industry.
Until the 1960s, the organization of printed elements on newspaper pages depended largely on two main
journalistic customs: the first being the standing or repeating elements such as the nameplate and the sec-
ond being the editor's daily hierarchical decisions for newspaper elements that change according to the day's
news stories. Since the nineteenth century, newspapers have divided their available space into editorial con-
tent and advertising. These two have become separate production areas, with distinct groups working inde-
pendently. Newspaper design focuses on the editorial side and is often called editorial design.

Editorial design controls a newspaper's visual presentation. Publishers from time to time mount a redesign
project either to plan a complete makeover (an unusual occurrence) or to update existing design gradually.
A cadre of independent redesign consultants focuses on the newspaper industry, although publishers may
instead use the internal design staff.

Editorial design also includes the daily design activity of staff members, which encompasses the changing
visual treatment of news items within the relatively fixed format of a publication: the selection, edition, and
organization of all visual elements in a newspaper. Although the newspaper has a set of design rules, these
do not resolve the specific problems and applications to individual stories and pages.

Since the 1990s, newspapers have required designers to be visually literate and also to be able to research
and write. As one result, newspaper designers are also called visual journalists. Practitioners with both skill
sets may come from art schools or from academic journalism programs.

Designers divide content between hard and soft news, distinctions that affect the formal presentation. A fea-
tures designer concentrates on soft news, such as features, reviews, and other non-timely items, which are
more open to variation and experimentation. A layout editor or designer concentrates on hard news produc-
tion and hews more closely to overall newspaper design guidelines.

Like other areas of visual practice, newspaper graphic design has changed through a series of style devel-
opments called movements. Since its emergence, the first main movement in newspaper design was mod-
ernism (initially called streamlining), a mid-twentieth-century effort led by newspaper design pioneer John Al-
lan, that removed clutter from page designs (such as, for example, headlines with many words capitalized) in
favor of the easier-to-read forms (such as headlines with only the initial word and proper nouns capitalized).
The second main movement in newspaper design was functionalism, a product of the late 1960s and early
1970s which Harold Evans of The Times of London led to remove the irregular shapes of story layout (such
as doglegs, where one column of type extends below others from the same story) in favor of more compact
forms (such as simple rectangles).

Newspapers have generally followed behind the avant-garde of other areas of design practice, such as mag-

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azine and product design. They have not, for example, so far adopted postmodern typography, which mixes
home-made-looking typefaces in exaggerated sizes that push beyond standard limits of legibility.

Design Components

The graphic design of newspapers employs type, images, and charts as visual components in an overall lay-
out.

Typography

Type is the oldest visual component of newspapers and, as the basic element of any design, includes the
visual appearance of the letterforms and symbols from any specific language.

Display typography grew out of book designs. The nameplate, or main newspaper title (sometimes mistakenly
called the masthead, the term for the list of editors appearing on the editorial page), may involve blackletter
type patterned after medieval lettering to give the impression of credibility and respect for authority. Headlines
became larger over time, compared to the columns of text, which grew smaller on the whole and more com-
pact. Larger-sized headlines usually indicate more important stories (see Layout, next page).

Newspaper designers share with other typographical workers a wide (and inconsistent) vocabulary for ele-
ments on the page. Among them are terms such as decks (subheads), drop caps (a large initial letter for the
first word of a paragraph), pull quotes (direct quotations enlarged to display size), lifts (bits of the story text en-
larged to display size), photo captions, refers (text pointing to other items in the newspaper), taglines (writer's
name, phone number or e-mail), and jump lines (indicators for where the story continues on another page or
column), among others. These terms are mostly descriptive and may seem obvious to designers but not to
most readers, and so their use helps sort insiders from outsiders in the industry. Each term, however, may
have a history that reveals deeper trends in society. The byline, for example, emerged along with the change
from old-time news hounds of the early twentieth century to the specialist reporters of late in the century, a
change that followed the wider advance of professionals throughout society.

Only in the early twentieth century did newspapers focus on the ease of identifying letterforms (legibility) and
the ease of understanding words (readability). In search of those qualities, editors began to make typograph-
ical decisions based on characteristics of letterforms, such as serifs (small feet or letter endings), which they
considered easier to read.

Designers also classify type by size (measured in the point, about .35 mm), weight (from boldface to light),
position (such as italics), case (capitals, lowercase, or small caps), and width (ranging from condensed to

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expanded). Most newspaper designers consider medium sizes, weights, and so forth more legible. Other el-
ements affect readability, including line length (the more words in a line, the less readable), leading (space
between lines), justification (ragged-right, ragged-left, centered, or justified), kerning (space between letters),
paragraph indentation, page margins, and background color. Again, the middle-range choices are usually
more readable. All these classifications and their effects on legibility and readability are culturally bound.
Western cultures read lowercase letters best from left to right, and so Western editorial designers rarely stack
the letters of a word, unlike those in Asia.

Photography

Photographs entered newspapers generally in the early twentieth century, replacing hand engravings (drawn
from photographs) and sketch art, which now tends to appear only with feature matter. News images ap-
peared first in black and white and later in color (such as special rotogravure sections, named after an au-
tomated engraving process). Production of photography in newspapers has evolved dramatically from plates
and flash powders, through film and paper, to digital processes.

Designers may use photos as line art (converted to pen-and-ink drawings either by hand or using software)
or in halftones that reproduce a range of grays in greater detail, depending on the image resolution. The
low quality of newsprint surfaces cannot achieve the high photo resolution in magazines, which use smooth,
glossy paper stock.

Newspaper designers usually arrange photographs within either vertical or horizontal frames (by scaling the
image). Although the photo editor may then sharpen and crop the image, any other manipulation changes the
image into a photo illustration (a label that must accompany it in the printed edition).

Illustration

News illustrations started appearing regularly in newspapers in the nineteenth century, with specific tech-
niques usually first appearing in advertisements and the editorial side adopting them later. Even so, newspa-
pers were primarily typographical products until the rise of the illustrated press at the end of the nineteenth
century. Photography took over many of the tasks of early news illustration, especially as a means to capture
the reader's attention, because of the perceived realism of the imagery.

Art movements, such as Art Deco, surrealism, and pop art, have played a major role in the production of

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newspaper imagery. These varied styles first appeared in advertising, migrated into magazines, and finally
appeared in newspapers. Newspaper illustrations now generally visualize what photography cannot capture:
sensations, moods, and other intangibles.

Newspaper designers may produce illustrations by using collage, ink, gouache, watercolor, color pencils, oil,
acrylics, a drawing pencil or pen, or computer software. Illustrators and designers may also create a three-di-
mensional composition for later photographing, resulting in a hybrid photo illustration.

Feature sections, including lifestyle, travel, health, and food, use illustrations more than do news sections,
following a longstanding pattern of innovation in newspaper design. Sports and business sections use illustra-
tion rarely. When they do, they apply realist techniques to fit with the reporting mission of news. For example,
they may use a drawing instead of a collage.

Editorial or opinion pages provided an early and continual location for political cartoons and other interpreta-
tive visual images. Caricatures and comics may have either satirical or entertainment purposes and appear
mostly as line drawings.

Informational Graphics

Despite the common American belief that USA Today brought informational graphics to the daily press in
1981, graphics have been part of newspapers for much longer. Maps were the earliest newspaper graphics,
appearing in the early nineteenth century. Other graphics include diagrams that explain how a system works,
tables that array data and lists, and graphs. Bar graphs most often display statistical information, pie graphs
represent a whole and its divided parts, and line graphs express numerical information over time. Newspaper
information graphics normally include the following: a title to identify the content, a brief caption or blurb to
explain it, the graphic information itself, the source of the information, and credits to identify the designer and
researcher.

Layout

Traditional nineteenth-century newspaper design focused on columns of text and tended to arrange pages
symmetrically. A key innovation of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century was to conceive of the
larger structure of the page (especially the front page) as conveying information through its layout or archi-
tecture. News designers have developed principles to organize elements on a page, all of which draw on

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modern aesthetic notions and offer guidance for organizing a composition. Some elements underlying the
principles include points, lines, planes, and shapes, and each element has relative aspects, including scale
(larger or smaller), color, value (dark or light), direction, and the like. Designers use these aspects to accom-
plish balance (so that pages are not lopsided), contrast (to highlight what is most important), harmony (so that
everything belongs), rhythm (to move the reader's eye across the page), and unity (to make the page hang
together), as principles of design.

Unlike printers or typographers who once decided how newspapers looked, the graphic designer sees the
printed page as a canvas, which can be large or small in format (page size), most commonly broadsheet (full-
sized pages) or tabloid (half-sized pages). Designers link these sizes to public perceptions of news. Historical-
ly, authoritative publications acquired larger formats, and sen-sationalistic news started in tabloid formats, but
national press cultures differ. Although the broadsheet holds the highest status in the English-speaking world,
serious newspapers elsewhere have small formats, especially in parts of Latin America, continental Europe,
and Asia. Because of the cost of newsprint, newspapers have tended to become smaller in both formats.

Designers work within the image area, the space displaying everything inside the margins. They divide the
area into columns, allowing for gutters (the spaces between each column). The topmost element of each page
is the folio line, which contains the date, the section, and the page number.

Since the 1990s, graphic design for newspapers has become a distinct occupation, with professional publica-
tions and associations. The main organization, founded in 1979, is the Society for News Design. Practitioners
attempt to give news visual meaning and bridge the gap between wordsmiths (traditional journalists) and im-
age-smiths (graphic designers and artists).

Newspaper designers have adapted to the rise of the Internet and accompanying circulation declines in print-
ed newspapers. At first some newspapers, such as The New York Times, sought to reproduce online the
visual appearance of the print editions. Other newspapers began by dumping (through automation) the print
product text into webpages with little design at all. Some web editions, such as The Washington Post of the
2000s, developed a separate visual identity from the print version.

To adapt, newspaper companies are hiring journalists who not only report and write but also take pictures,
record audio, and shoot video. Online journalism has taken priority for disseminating news and events as they
take place, while the print editions continue to develop traditional news packages. Page designers are moving
to web design as well, which requires a different set of skills for storytelling and presentation.

Like other journalists, newspaper designers tend to work across platforms, and platforms also refer to each
other. Some items, such as e-mail addresses and references to more information online, migrated from the

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web to print editions, and some online editions provide links to electronic pages of the print edition (usually
only to subscribers).

Although editorial designer is a recent job title, newspapers have always had a visual component. Newspa-
pers after the invention of other news media have continued to be visual products that draw on the latest
thinking of designers and artists. The visual changes in the printed and online press reveal much deeper
movements in how a society views itself and how journalists see themselves. Traditional newspaper design
of the nineteenth century treated readers as omnivores who read everything, column by column, but twenty-
first-century design treats readers as choosy consumers who jump around and browse for only those items
they want.

• newspaper design
• newspapers

ElioLeturia and Kevin G.Barnhurst

Digital Photography
Editing, Online and Digital
Graphics
Layout
Magazine Design
Newsprint
Photography
Printing
Type and Typography

Further Readings

Allen, John E.Newspaper Designing. New York: Harper, 1947.

Barnhurst, Kevin G.“News as Art.” Journalism Monographs 130. Columbia, SC: AEJMC, 1991.

Barnhurst, Kevin G.Seeing the Newspaper. New York: St. Martin's, 1994.

Barnhurst, Kevin G., and JohnNerone. The Form of News, A History. New York: Guilford, 2001.

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Evans, Harold. Newspaper Design. New York: Holt, 1973.

Hutt, Allen. The Changing Newspaper. London: Fraser, 1973.

Tufte, Edward R.Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Edward R. Tufte, 1990.

Zachrisson, Bror. Studies in Legibility. Stockholm: Almqvist, 1965.

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412972048

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