Exercises

Chapter Two introduces you to the elements of story design, including the basic formats for combining text and images. If you use a page-layout program like QuarkXpress or PageMaker, you are probably familiar with different ways of sizing and positioning images on a page. In order to familiarize yourself with the basic design formats, however, try these scissors-and-paper exercises:

1. Find an article that combines images and text in your local newspaper, ideally one with two or more images. If possible, identify the format used by the designer, referring to the formats described in pages 50-66.
   
   
2. Cut out the separate elements of the article (don't worry about the cutlines for now; just leave them where they are next to the photos). Try rearranging the images. If, for example, you've chosen an article like the one on page 56, with multiple images, try excluding or repositioning one or two to make the visual emphasis different.
   
   
3. Now cut out the headline and cut the text of the article into columns and then into chunks of an inch or so. Rearrange the columns of text so that they fit the new format you've chosen for the images. Don't worry about getting everything to fit perfectly; just try to get a feel for the new format.
   
   
4. Now eliminate all but one of the images and rearrange the text to fit a single-image format.
   
   
5. If the original article did not include a mugshot, find one from elsewhere in the paper and rearrange the format once again to include the mugshot.