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Design Principles - Legibility, Readability, Hierarchies - Newspapers

My task is to select 3 double page spreads of  newspapers to investigate the hierachys of font in order of impotance and disect and review how this works. I will also be reviewing the readability and legibility of fonts across the three designs. I will choose one which i think is GOOD design, one which is AVERAGE and one which is BAD design...


GOOD DESIGN // LOUD & QUIET


alternative music tabloid that i collect weekly. I like the layout of this because it is always simple and to the point. It is also consistent throughout each article and story and also every week. It has a contemporary feel to the design and layout but is also easy to understand, red and is very legible. The title is the first things you read after the image above it it most cases and then the body copy font being smaller. Simple! 







The biggest text on the page is actually the 'illuminated letter' 'A' at the start of the paragraph. This is to let you know where that section of writing starts and is really clear to understand.


The title is the biggest after this, obviously. Again quite a contemporary style of font to use but also really clear and simple. Both legible and readable. 



Again another font is introduced for the subheadings. The section explaining the title and the writer and photographer. The font is still clearly legible. not really readable as body-copy but would be readable for a sun heading like in this instance. 


The body-copy is simple standard Times font which is both legible and readable.

AVERAGE DESIGN // STOOL PIGEAN

Another music and art based alternative tabloid. I like the layout because they are different form a lot of newspapers.. They are not afraid to break the boundaries with styles and colours but sometimes this is a bit too inconstant and makes it difficult to move around and read easily. 





Double page spread shows interesting colours, position layout and images around the text, but the font itself is quite simple and easy to read. A couple of titles and mainly body-copy here. 







Biggest text on the page is the titles 'Cover' and 'Story'. They are unusual choices of font to use but non-the-less legible for a title and really unique. 


Next we have the title for the other section which is quite small compared to other titles. It is readable and legible but too small to stand out as a title on the page. 


This is then followed by a subheading which is in the same font but slightly smaller. and the body copy is in exactly the same font!





BAD DESIGN // LOCAL NEWSPAPER


very poor design this local newspaper double page spread. I couldn't find a page that wasn't crammed with tack advertisements trying to grab your attention, wether it looked nice or not. There is a small headline and article on the top left but it is swarmed and taken over by colourful, tacky advertisements. 



Double Page Spread



Left Page


Right Page



The biggest fonts on the page belong to the advertisments. They are easily legible and readable, bold and colourful but also quite tacky. 


The third largest type on the page is the headline of the article believe it or not. It is again bold, legible and readable, it looks like arial bold but is still not that noticeable under all the advertisements. 






The next largest fonts again all belong to the two main advertisements, the 'tesco' one on the left which takes up the full page and the 'cineworld' one the bottom half of the right page. The font is all again pretty bold and in your face. not really classy font but none the less all legible and readable.






The next collection of type seems to be the same as the larger fonts on the adverts but a little bit smaller, used almost for body copy in a way. Still legible just because it is so bold and big but when it comes to readability here, it becomes a lot harder because when these types of font are placed together to make a sentence or paragraph, it becomes harder to read as you would body copy. 






Much smaller now is the body copy of the articles. both readable and legible obviously.








Finally, here are all the really small logos dotted around the page, mainly on adverts in the corner. 






Smallest text on the page is the page headers and boarders. Page numbers, websites and the smallest of all being the small print on the advertisments. These are barely readable or even legible to the naked eye. 



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