Rules of Thumb and Hand

The Steve Byers Rule of Thumb: Never have a head smaller than your thumb.

Our class designed front pages last week. This week we critiqued them, and I certainly violated that design rule of thumb.

When designing a page, never make a picture so tiny a person’s face is smaller than your thumb. Never write headlines shorter than the length of your thumb either.

I’d never even opened Adobe InDesign before last week, much less had I designed a page. That may explain why my columns were off-kilter, my text didn’t wrap correctly and my heads were smaller than my thumb. My page simply looked like a solid text block with a jumble of headlines at the top.

But it’s a learning experience. Next time my elements will have a definite hierarchy. My photos will be rectangular instead of unattractive and square-like. Maybe I’ll even have some functional text wrapping around those rectangular photos. I’ll use rules between my columns.

And I’ll include more visual content.

In addition to his Rule of Thumb, Steve Byers also offered a Rule of Hand: Always be able to touch some design, photo or graphic element when you lay your hand down on a page.

I have small hands, so this is especially challenging.

The page I designed last week had one photo of Nancy Pelosi and other House representatives in the center just above the fold (and their heads were more like pinky-size). In the bottom right corner was a small (and square) photo of plastic water bottles that allegedly contained biphenyl a.

But two elements may have saved my pitiful design: The weather graphic at the bottom of the page and the teaser photos above the masthead for stories about glamour girls Keira Knightley and Lindsay Lohan. (Upon seeing another teaser photo of Miley Cyrus, Dr. Byers put the class on hold to ask if anyone knew whether the teenybopper puts collagen in her lips. Curious.)

Regardless, I violated the Rule of Hand. Majorly.

Miley and Keira aside, I needed more graphics to draw in the reader. As compelling as text may be, something needs to initially catch the reader’s eye.

Maybe I should consider adding some graphic elements to my blog.