news design

(Ignoring the blah design of this worthless blog,) I'm getting that news designer's itch again. I want to make something cool.

About a week ago now I thought up this darn nifty photo illustration (inspired by the NWC website, nonetheless) that definitely drew reader attention to the not-that-fabulous article connected, yet I've gotten so many compliments on the story. I wrote the story, I know it's crap. It was the design that made it stand out.

Every page since that day has felt like a cop out.

Now I'm looking at newspagesdesign.com and brasstacksdesign.com. Mostly they make me feel inadequate. When I get back from vacation, though (one week to the beach!), I hope to start making some changes to the way I do layout and editing.

I love this in the middle here. http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/bfd/122806.html
(I have a permanent rail in the left column of my front page to work around, which really limits your design options. On the other hand, it's kind of nice to have the pool limited down from every possibility out there to a few less.)

I would have done that page all black and white, though, I think, anyway. Or at least that photo in the upper right seems wrong to me. And I'd have raised the drop-cap G up a few more points. And the three legs of body copy need some more room above them to breathe. I do like that tan. And the apple! The 'president', though, should be the same height as the three lines combined next to it. But nice use of space as a whole. And nice way to tie the photo into the page. I love that. I want to do it more. But it takes time and the right photo and forethought, which equals more time. So mostly time. Which I am definitely in the negative column on.