How a page gets created

Matt Willey recently recorded his decision-making on a feature design for the Royal Academy magazine. It provides a very useful insight into how page designs get arrived at, one that anyone who’s ever designed a magazine will recognise.

14 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

1. That’ll be a man with quite a bit of time on his hands.

   Comment by bob — July 7, 2008 #

2. Haha. Maybe a more thoughtful approach and bothering to sketch a layout concept first would increase his daily DTP productivity.

   Comment by Woz — July 7, 2008 #

3. I can’t help but think that at least half of this could have been avoided by making some quick sketches.

   Comment by richard — July 7, 2008 #

4. Easy to mock but I bet a record of your page work would provide a similar pattern of indecision!

   Comment by jeremy — July 8, 2008 #

5. Actually, a lot of computer-friendly designers would say that this *is* sketching. If sketching on the computer is slower than with pencil, it makes up time by not needing to be translated to another format, and all that tweaking is going to be necessary no matter how you sketch.

   Comment by Sam Potts — July 9, 2008 #

6. OK. I guess that’s one way to do it.
   I agree with Richare from July 7th.

   Comment by pat taylor — July 9, 2008 #

7. Seems to me he should wait for a headline… but that IS sketching. Pencils are for clairvoyants.

   Comment by matto — July 9, 2008 #

8. I agree completely with Sam Potts. “Sketching” doesn’t require only a pencil.

   Any way you slice it, the layout will need to be created on the computer. And, unless you’re copyfitting with a pica stick and a character table, on the computer is the only place you’ll find how the copy will fit in the allotted space. Might as well start the sketch process in the final media (computer) and get it over with.

   Sketching on the computer also allows one to quickly visualize accurate crops and correctly-proportioned headlines. Note how many times this guy changed copy for the heads. Sketching all of those headline treatments by hand while maintaining the correct proportions of the lettering would be tedious and time consuming at best, and completely inaccurate at worst.

   An analogy: We used to “write” by hand and then typeset or typewrite only the final copy. Then the word processor came along and made it possible to quickly and effortlessly edit and rearrange. Nearly everyone, with the exception of luddites or those whose “personal style” finds it fashionable or nostalgic to do things the “old way”, has embraced the word processor. When was the last time you wrote a letter out by hand before typing it up in your email program?

   Page layout programs have done the exact same thing. It’s now possible — and, I would argue, preferable — to sketch on the computer.

   Comment by mister_eaves — July 9, 2008 #

9. As is someone recorded one of my work related nightmares. Worse than running in slow motion.

   What again, are we doing with our lives as designers?

   Comment by Steve S — July 10, 2008 #

10. I’m laughing at all the dithering with the different titles (was waiting for “Utopia Light” to show up at one point) and their finally being replaced by XXXX–just goes to show how much time is spent trying to find that kewt katchy kome-on attention grabber–that might be better spent elsewhere.

    Comment by recreant — July 12, 2008 #

11. I think this process is called “Working With Editors.”

    Comment by Kate G. — July 15, 2008 #

12. Re the Pencil/computer sketch thing. I always find that sketching with pencil is best at a table with the Editor, the Pic Editor, a print out of the copy and all the pictures. That way you can work out the headline what pictures go with it and sketch out where it will all go – and then everybody knows what its going to look like. You could do this onscreen but then you’d get the Editor asking for ‘Comic Sans’ to be used aswell as greasy fingerprints all over your screen.

    By the way I mainly work on weekly’s so speed is of the essence…

    Or is that clip in real time? If so, I’ll hire him! (joke)

    Comment by RS — August 1, 2008 #

13. Ha!

    The bloody sod works with a real title alltogether?! Come on! He’s a lucky, lucky one…

    Lorem ipsum till the deadline makes it harder and tells real designers from digital wannabes! (LOL)

    Comment by Layout Minion — August 5, 2008 #

14. Does anyone else feel he was doing better with the first few incarnations of the feature. It seemed to get more and more wordy as it went on.

    Only thing is… His/her inside spreads aren’t that inspiring… (presuming he’s a guy, as it’s a very masculine design)

    Comment by Jonny Clark — August 6, 2008 #

Leave a comment