What Design Can Do for the Editor
Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 10:50 PM
Putting design to work for your editorial content.
By
Jan V. White
Is print dying? Yes: lousy print is,
because it deserves to. It is being displaced by something better. But good
print is flourishing and will continue to do so. The difference
between "lousy" and "good" is design, not in terms of its prettiness but
its function.
Function has little to do with art. Design is not
cake decorating. It is not cosmetic. It is not like
gift-wrapping, which camouflages what it contains. Good design, like
shrink-wrapping, fits what it contains, exposes it to view, and makes it
look shiny and new. You know what you are getting in a blister package.
Good design expresses, reflects, and exposes inner meaning. Helping
inner meaning jump off the page is the true value of "design." It
transmits writers' words, their inherent ideas, and their significance
to the reader vividly, strikingly, memorably. If it looks startling and
trendy but is essentially meaningless, it is nothing more than phony
window-dressing.
Formats, templates, and style sheets
Functional
design cannot be based on these elements. It has to be custom-molded to
the substance it contains. It is organic. It grows out of the needs of
the specific material. Every problem bears within itself the seeds of
its own solution, and every problem is different from all other
problems. Accomplishing this custom molding is an intellectual judgment anyone
can make -- yes, even editors who profess ignorance of "design." Design
is an objective, intellectual, logical set of editorial
decisions. It is not prettification, which is a subjective method based
on "liking." Nobody argues for ugliness, but prettiness added for the
sake of prettiness is not the point. Communicating ideas is what design
exists to do. If it works and gets the point across, it is "good" design
-- even if it looks ugly.
There is no such thing as an aesthetic
standard, nothing that is "right" or "wrong". There's only effective or
ineffective. There are no black-and-white rules about anything in our
editorial and design professions.
Traditions, rules, and
nostrums
There are thousands of contradictory design
shortcuts and substitutes that get you into trouble, because they are so
easy to misunderstand. You encountered these shortcuts on the job when
you were first being trained and probably continue to take them. They
are in how-to books, seminars by self-appointed gurus, and magazine
makeover articles. They are confusing, and it is no wonder that the
untrained non-specialist (who gave up art in high school and can't draw
a straight line) is confused.
Hired designers and the decision
vacuum
Editors buy the "art part" from official specialists
with sheepskin that certifies them as experts. Experts in what? In
"arting." They have taste! They are blessed with psychic powers and
inspiration that can fill the vacuum of indecision in the writer's mind.
How
can they possibly know better than the writer about what the writer is
trying to say? the answer: they don't. Yet the word people put them on a
pedestal, so they must pretend that they do know. They are admired for
their "creativity" in coming up with something that hasn't been done
before. I submit that there may be damn good reasons why something
hasn't been done before.
Furthermore, writers let the designers
bully them into using their muse-kissed solutions. They are the visual
experts who have to work in a vacuum. That vacuum is the writers' own
fault; they have not thought deeply enough about the significance or
utility of their story. Once they decide on is values, they know what is
worth emphasizing. The "design," (i.e. type size, boldness, page layout,
arrangement) all become easy decisions because they grow naturally from
the understanding of what needs emphasis. Once the writers know what
they want to say, they can then easily figure out how to say it,
because they can shape the form to accommodate the content. They must
communicate this understanding to their designers and then be in control
of whatever form the designer may suggest. (That is why designers must
be brought into the editing team, coached, and made enthusiastic about
the content by the editors from step one. Only true teamwork can
possibly produce the excellence demanded. Without overcoming that gap
between editorial and design departments, only lousy print can be the
result.)
Design is integral to the editing process
Design
can not be a standalone step added as an afterthought, when everything
else is finished. Like it or not, "editing" now embraces all aspects of
communicating a message, and successful transmission of content demands
control not just of the what but also the how.
Unfortunately, many word people aren't even slightly competent at
translating their words and ideas into transmittable visual form. These
blinkered word people are now handling these arcane secrets -- doing it
themselves or overseeing others who do it for them.
Alas, there
are no formulas because every message, every audience, every purpose
varies. You alone must judge the appropriateness of any technique:
--Two
columns or three? Who knows? If I said three columns are better than two
(which they sometimes are), you'd have another half-baked truism to
confuse you. If I said two columns are better than three (which they
sometimes are), it might not make sense for your needs. I personally
prefer working in a single column because it is fastest to scan,
especially in complex documents. Does that mean I tell my client always
to use it? Obviously not. As with all editorial and design decisions,
you get there by analysis and logic.
--Is serif type better than
sans-serif? Usually, but sometimes not.
--Is ragged right better
than justified setting. Yes, but it depends.
--Are all-caps hard
to read? Yes, except in special situations.
--Are italics harder
to read than roman? Yes, normally.
--Is Up-and-Down Style Bad in
Headlines? Yes, invariably. Always.
Design isn't an arcane
skill but a common-sense tool
--Typography is just speech
made visible. Consider type that way, and you can begin to control
it and make decisions about it that will help the reader understand your
verbal message.
--Pictures are a parallel language. Think
of them as such and you will start to edit them more actively, so that
what they say becomes as significant as what they show. Besides,
they are a visual, emotional shorthand that creates curiosity. Every
picture is an opportunity for both catching and informing the viewer.
Realize that images are the first thing to be looked at on the page, so
use them as doorways into the text. They make viewers curious for
meaning -- i.e., content. --Design is a lubricant for ideas. The
ideas are more important than the shape or pattern in which they are
displayed. Stop making artistic compositions for artistic reasons.
Instead, manipulate your material so the viewer follows what you want
them to see in the sequence you want them to, bit by bit. (Short bits
are popular; long-looking ones put people off).
--First-glance
value is key. Bust up big things into clusters of smaller ones. That
way, you ask for less commitment from the hurried scanner. Separate
stories from each other with moats of white space so that each item is
recognizable.
--Strategy makes your word-and-picture message
desirable. Face it: very few people actually want your publication.
What they need is the information it carries. Fifteen million drillbits
were sold last year and nobody wanted them. What they wanted was holes.
Find out what holes your readers want, and provide them the drillbits
with which to make them. Prove the usefulness of your product by giving
service -- i.e., content, not glossy surface pretense. Display the
content with strong, meaty headlines.
--Judge everything you
do from the recipients' point of view. Not yours, theirs. You know
what you are trying to say, but they don't. Inform them in such a way
that they will understand it now. They want their information
fast, concise, and easy to access and follow. And it had better look
dramatic, or they will fail to notice it. (Yes, this is certainly one
function of design.) It had better be written and edited with them in
mind, with the what's-in-it-for-me value right on top, or they will not
bother.
Design is salesmanship
Catapulting content
off the page requires a strategy of attraction and persuasion. Good
salesmanship does not tell lies. It never pretends. It explains the
quality of the goods and the benefit of using them. Overdone design
skews the viewer's attention and is essentially a form of lying. When
the viewer looks at a page and says, "Oh, what a gorgeous page," then
the design is bad, because it has drawn attention to itself and away
from the message. It is usually the exciting-looking design -- which is
what editors often ask for and mistakenly think is so great -- that
results in this paradox. Make the design bring the message out clearly,
succinctly, forthrightly. That way the function of design is fulfilled,
and it has nothing to do with whether you understand "art" or not. You
do understand your message, don't you? The investors (optimistically
called "readers," whose assumed number determines your print run) don't
give two hoots about the way the publication looks. Few get displayed on
coffee tables for æsthetic admiration. They bought your product and take
time to read it for its content. The way you show that content off so
they get it clearly and fast is the function of the way you present it
to them. That is where "design" adds value.
Jan
White lectures worldwide on the relationship of graphics to editing,
persuading word people to think visually and visual people to think
verbally. He has worked for 50 years in magazine design. He is the
author of Editing by Design and a dozen other books on publishing
techniques. Contact him at janvw2@aol.com..
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"Bravo, Jan! This article should be printed out, framed, and hung up in the office of every publication and of every designer, writer, and editor. Thank you!" --Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, WriterRuth.com. 07-31-2011