Anne Van Wagener tackles some of the standard design rules for publications, showing that some of them are actually guidelines, not hard and fast rules (sound like a line from Pirates of the Caribean?).
She shows that effective design is much better than mindless adherence to edicts that have been passed down by generations of editors and designers.
Myth 1: Photos pointing off the page make readers leave the page. Not necessarily. Faces pointing into the page are a nice-to-have feature, not a must-have.
The one myth I was surprised that Van Wagener even found existed is that cutlines and captions don't matter. This may be partly because so much attention goes into the editing of an article, but the cutlines are added at the page design stage. Of course they matter! And don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.
These principles apply equally to organizational publications. Van Wagener teaches at the Poynter Institute and designed the elegant Poynter Online web site.
Comments