This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Make your flier easier to read
This fundamental design principle will invigorate your pages.
A trip to the Renaissance Faire: It’s an experience that is rife with flavor and imagination. But it’s also an event whose promotion might plunge an unimaginative designer into the land of trite. So it’s important to consider your design carefully.
Imagine that for the flier design, you have the fair’s logo and a folder full of engravings. With art this cool, you know that your flier will be spectacular.
At least that’s what you think. You try one layout idea, then another. You try again. It seems that no matter what you do, the results are basically the same: boring. Even though you’re using beautiful art, your layout has no movement. It’s static. What’s the problem?
Chances are you’re not using the design tools of scale and weight to your advantage. With these powerful devices, you can lead the reader from one element to the next and the next in the sequence you want. Proper use of scale and weight will not only improve your design; it will make your flier easier to read. Let’s see how that works.
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1 Pick one element to be dominant...
...and make it large and/or heavy. Remember, dominance depends on both scale and weight. Something large can actually recede because it has very little weight.
Why a dominant element?
Varying the size and weight of the graphics is how the designer guides the reader around the layout. When the eye scans the page, it sees the biggest or heaviest item first. It then travels to the next-largest element and continues viewing by scale until it has examined the entire page.
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The savvy designer will use this to his advantage; he will manipulate the size of the graphics to steer the reader in the desired direction.
In this example, it was determined that the minstrel engraving would be dominant. Note how the remaining elements are scaled to move the eye around the page.
Scale the Remaining Elements...
...so they appear smaller and/or lighter than the dominant one. In most cases, you’ll want to create a descending order of scale—something is large, another is mid-sized, another is small. The reader’s eye will generally move from one to the next in the order you scale them.
2 Create type contrasts
Use size, weight, or both to create contrasts among headline, text and caption copy. For the headline, bold Compacta was chosen for its very high contrast with the dainty, serif text (Cochin). Its size was then reduced, however, so it would not dominate—or compete for dominance with—the minstrel graphic. For the same reason, a heavy sans serif was chosen for the caption.
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Determine Your Emphasis
As the designer, you are the one who will judge which element will catch the reader’s eye. In some cases, you will attract attention with a graphic, other times with a headline (right) and occasionally (below right) with the text. Just be sure that what you want to emphasize is dominant on the page.
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Engravings: A Hot Old Source for Art
Tired of that same old clip-art look when putting together your newsletter? Try using old engravings. These finely detailed, turn-of-the-century illustrations lend an added sense of quality to any project. Best of all, they are very inexpensive. Many companies sell books, CDs or online engraving art; a quick search on the Internet will reveal many sources.
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Those who are more adventurous can start their own archive of engravings by haunting used book and antique stores. The collector should be cautious of copyright infringement, however. As a rule of thumb, do not use any artwork that is less than 75 years old.
Scanning tipsEngravings can be tricky to scan. Because they are composed primarily of very fine lines, they have a tendency to fill in and lose detail. Reproducing the image on a copier prior to scanning seems to help. Set the exposure slightly lighter than normal. This intensifies contrast and gives the appearance of increasing resolution. Clean up any blobs on screen electronically or on paper with good old correction fluid.
The artwork should be scanned at 300 dpi at the size you intend to use it. Scans that have been enlarged after they have been placed in a program tend to break up, and the scanning resolution shows itself in the illustration.
For best results, scan the engraving as line art. Increase the brightness to keep the contrast gained from copying. Save the art as a TIFF.