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Lots of visual goodies on the Tuesday front page of the Observe-Dispatch. Let's start from the top.
The skybox promotion to a story about World Refugee Day includes a cutout of hands holding a globe. The designer who built this knows how to anchor cutouts. Here, because the refer across the top prevent the image from being anchored to the top of the page, the designer chose to anchor it to the inside of the gray frame. Extra points given for overlapping the fingers out of the bottom to add depth to 2-dimensional print media.
The centerpiece story by staff writer Dan Miner gives readers some insight on the declining club membership. Miner's story alludes to the course's new policy that bans the use of privately owned golf carts as a possible cause for the lower numbers, which have dropped to 98 members in 2012, a 57 percent drop from the 2010 membership of 230.
This interesting story comes with a lot of great numbers across the bottom of the package about the course, including membership, number of private carts in use, numbers of the relatively new lease-a-seat program and revenue and spending comparisons. Great stuff.
Not ideal, though, is all that data packed into small lists, which make the comparisons difficult. I'd suggest a fever chart for the first three columns of data that show change over time. Doing so would keep from the repetitive use of the years in each column. A chart would work especially nice for the private carts and lease-a-seat figures, which would show private carts trending sharply downward and lease-a-seat trending upward with a spike in 2011.
The numbers showing revenue and spending also could have been shown on one chart, also showing if the course ended the fiscal year in the black or red.
Still, I'm sure readers got a eyeful of information with this story, which is fantastic. But always look for ways to display information visually for quicker understanding and retention.
The main photo by staff photographer Mark DiOrio uses a row of golf carts to frame the course's general manager. Really nice. I think, though, the cutline is a bit long here for a 4-column photo.
Still, a really nice page!
Do you have a nice package, page or section you'd like to share? Send it to the address below and include some info on how it all came together. Creative minds want to know!
Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media.
Contact him at jgreco@gatehousemedia.com.
Missed front page of the day? Find the archive here.
When it comes to newspaper design, our Corporate Design Director Joe Greco knows the score. He brings his award-winning eye to pages produced by GateHouse newspapers both inside our Design Houses and out. Also contributing to this blog on regular basis are:
• Doug Gass — Content/delivery manager
• Bruce Heisel — Central desk dayside manager
• Adam McHugh — Metro Design House manager/common content editor
• Matt Torman — Central desk nightside manager
