YEARBOOK AND MAGAZINE LAYOUT
Visual appeal is a crucial element in the success of both yearbooks
and magazines. Making these publications visually appealing is the job
of the designer or layout artist. In Chapter 15 we covered the terminol-
ogy and fundamentals of design. In this section we’ll look at the special
opportunities designers have with yearbook and magazine layouts.
Perhaps nowhere else in the world of school publications is there so
much room for creativity.
Yearbook and magazine layouts are very similar, so we’ll consider
them together. For the most part, we’ll refer to layouts as if we were
designing a yearbook. Remember, however, that the same ideas apply
to magazines. When special considerations apply to magazines only,
we’ll say so.
Mosaic Style
Most yearbook layouts are based on the mosaic concept of design.
Basically, elements are arranged in a pinwheel fashion, clustered around
a central focal point. What makes the design work is consistent inter-
nal margins, or spaces between elements. Each element should be the
same distance—usually one or two picas—from all adjoining elements.
The result is an organized and attractive page design. We will lead you
through a five-step process for creating good mosaic layouts. First,
though, you have some planning to do.
Before You Start Design your magazine or yearbook two
pages at a time. That is, think and plan in terms of facing pages. As we
said earlier in the chapter, facing pages are referred to as a double-page
spread. Readers usually see two pages at a time. It’s almost impossible to
bend a yearbook cover back upon itself, as you might with a comic book.
Furthermore, two-page designs (spreads) give you twice as much room
to create exciting and interesting layouts. By concentrating your design
efforts on spreads, you also avoid producing pages that fight each other
when placed side-by-side.
Another important consideration before you actually begin drawing
a layout is to choose the number of columns your pages will contain.
A column is the standard width you have chosen for your stories. Columns
help provide order and control in your layout. They do not limit your cre-
ativity, despite what you might suppose. Almost all yearbooks and maga-
zines use some form of column design on the next page. (See Figure 18.4.)
Once you’ve gained a little experience drawing layouts, you will find
that there are many variations on a basic six- or eight-column format,
including a strange beast called a plus column. Some layout methods
even use as many as 11 columns across a single spread. You’ll learn more
about these strategies later in this section.
YEARBOOKS AND MAGAZINES^421
mosaic concept of design
a design concept in which all
elements are arranged in a
pinwheel fashion, clustered
around a central focal pointcolumn
the basis for constructing a
page layout. A column is the
standard width for copy cho-
sen for a particular yearbook
section or magazine