words HOW TO TELL A STORY
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mario garcia
Engines to good design Designers who respect words gain the respect of the editors they work with. Respect for words shows in every page. Words hold the key to our senses, in ways that perhaps visuals, and even the power of color, can’t. We may be impacted by the presence of a bright hue on a page, but words mesmerize, and are remembered long after our eyes went on to seek other sensations on another page. Not long ago, Tom Brokaw was presenting a lead-in to a documentary on the Baby Boom generation. He was seated at his desk in a dark suit, with nothing around him but the weight of words. The words themselves were far more powerful than any of the footage shown. For the designer, words have practical applications:
Certain “key words” give us visual clues. Cling to adjectives (“this was an over-the-top school principal”), to descriptive phrases (“it had not rained for days, all was dry and brown”), or point of view (“there was nothing humorous about this meeting”) and seek ways to reflect them on the page. The tone of the words leads to the tone of the design. While reading a manuscript, a good designer underlines any passages that describe potential visuals.
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pure design
Even when words are used to point directly to an aspect of a story such as “ what the strike means”, the designer can then utilize visual tools to make the material more comprehensible. It is an interesting exercise, and one I recommend to start by writing a short paragraph descriptive of what a design project is all about. I find myself making notes that read: “This is a text-driven newspaper where what one reads is more important than what one sees. . . .” “Here we must explode with energy on every page: the bold, the large, the bright hues, all are protagonists in this circus-like environment. . . .” “A website for those who wish to meditate and contemplate: go easy on the bright images; find dropped capitals to intercept here and there.”
When a reader sees a page, it is the words he begins with. No matter what one is designing, he begins with words. It all starts with words, so we begin our study of pure design with words.
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