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CSPA is affiliated with the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in the City of New York.

SPACE

White space is an important element of design, beginning with the external margins on the spread. Contemporary standards for external margins call for a wider frame of negative space surrounding the spread. While consistent internal margins are crucial to a well-designed publication, there will also be times when an experienced designer makes a conscious decision to use less or additional white space in the interior of the spread. The external margin, which should remain the same throughout the entire publication, packages the content of the spread as a unit, focuses attention on the combined components and creates a resting place for the eye. While the width of the external margin might vary depending on the trim size of your book, the top and outside margins should be the same (likely 3-5 picas) and the bottom margin should be nearly double the size (to allow for folios as well as to create a foundation on which the other elements rest). Just 15 years ago, there was a single correct answer when it came to internal margins: one pica. Keen observers will note that this has changed with specific intentions of packaging elements together or creating a clear division between one part of the visual package and another. If you consider the reasons behind the varied uses of internal negative space, its use can almost be reduced to a science, making your intended communication with your readers clear.

Here are some guidelines:

• Level 1: Negative space groups elements together visually because the designer has purposely used less space between them. (close register, 2 pt. white rule) Goal: Packaging
  
  
• Level 2: Negative space separates content uniformly. (usually 1 pica) Goal: Consistency
  
  
• Level 3: Negative space creates a rail of isolation that visually distinguishes verbal packages or secondary coverage from other content. (usually 1 grid, vertically and/or horizontally) Goal: Separation

While the one-pica internal margin was the standard for decades, using only Level 2 white space gives a spread a dated look. The most contemporary designs use all three levels of white space in consistent measures, often both vertically and horizontally as a reminder that the treatment was intentional.

RELATIONSHIP

The best designers make certain that even casual readers can see that elements are repeated visually because they are related. They create linkage with consistent usage of type, white space and graphics in a package, section or publication.

Great designers understand the importance of visual variety and provide options for a mix of content components as well as those with vertical and horizontal shapes. Their first decisions regard the way they will tell the story, and then they deal with actually arranging the elements on the page. A sense of balance creates spreads that seem to fit comfortably– both on their own and with each other.

Once you master these four principles, you may find that you have more success straying from the basic design guidelines. It might be that you can “copy” from other publications with greater success or that your experimental designs are suddenly acceptable in the eyes of the most pragmatic editor or traditional adviser.

The difference between a solid design that is technically “correct” and a spread that really wows the readers is often very subtle. While many designers who attempt to do new things discard the foundations of good design, truly great designers maintain those principles as they break ground by playing with new ideas.

Now let’s apply these design principles of voice, scale, space and relationship to a typical beginning layout that maintained yearbook design standards. In four steps a designer can take an okay layout and turn it into one that wows the readers.

Ann Akers is the associate director of the National Scholastic Press Association/Associated Collegiate Press in Minneapolis, MN.  Paul Ender is a former yearbook adviser and lecturer on trends in yearbook design from Palm Springs, CA.