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Look at that big splash of color on the front page of The Examiner's weekend edition. Lots of impact. Written by staff writer Jeff Martin, centerpiece story profiles a local man who played an integral part of NASA's Apollo project that put a man on the moon.
Though it's not mentioned in the story or labeled as such, the story publishes just days in advance of the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's space flight. That anniversary was recognized by a number of papers that have ties to the space program. (See how some papers treated that anniversary on Charles Apple's blog here.)
The Examiner's package includes a fantastic file shot of a NASA launch. No cutline, but I found the same photo on a NASA page. It's a Saturn 1b. I don't know enough about the rockets, but I believe the Apollo module is the cone of the rocket.
I like how the photo was used as the background for the package. It's nice to see the photo of the man profiled in the story, but the image of the rocket launching is a much more dramatic.
There are a couple elements I'm not so fond of. Most notable is the font choice used in the headline. It's certainly a goal to be creative with page design, but using fonts that stray from the usual set can clutter the page. It's best to be creative with content instead of using funky fonts.
As I said at the beginning of this post, the color give the page a great deal of impact. But be careful of using too much color. There's a lot of color in the main photo. And there's a lot of color as part of the nameplate. The colors in both are very similar. Using even more of the same colors in the headline really is just too much here. For better contrast, I would have argued for two things. the use of white type for the headline, and some white space to separate the photo from the nameplate area.
The other thing I spotted is the odd break between the two legs of that story. The story begins there at the drop cap, but jumps to the sliver of real estate between the rocket and the Only Online box, high above the start of the story. It's best to keep objects, in this case the photo subject, from splitting legs of type. There's just too much space between the bottom of the leg at left and the top of the leg at right.
Otherwise, a really nice page.
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.
