Understanding words, visuals and blank spaces
A newspaper can be majorly divided into three parts — words, visuals and blank spaces. While the words are what convey the most information in the written format, visuals and blank space are design elements that help a newspaper look great. Words can be further divided into headlines, sub-headlines, story, and a lot of other such elements — will write about them soon!
Visuals here can refer to pictures as well as graphic elements. When it comes to pictures, they play two vital features — they help in supporting facts, work as proof for the story being discussed in words and make the page look attractive — would you really like to read a newspaper with just grey words? The graphic element part of the visuals is when they are used as graphs — literally. You know those drawings, figures, maps and other such elements that help in simplifying news? All of those things are essentially visuals.
Blank spaces on a page have two reasons for their existence. One is the production aspect, which is the compulsory space required to be left on the extreme sides of the pages, enclosing everything on the page. This is done for the newspaper printing machine. This space is called gutter space.
The other kind is the one that’s related to giving relief to the reader’s eyes — its use depends on the designer and the style of the newspaper. Every newspaper has a set style they follow so that the pages look fundamentally alike on any given day. The second kind is the space between the stories and other elements on the page. Imagine a page with all the news pieces just crunched together, without any breathing space in between!
We will be putting up more such articles on the different aspects of a newspaper – stay tuned!
Jagruti Verma
With a little experience of feature writing and subbing on her resume, Jagruti strives to get better with each piece of writing she works on. You can connect with her on Twitter at @JagrutiVerma
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