mario garcia

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Shapes of informationThere is nothing complicated about the shapes, or modules, in

which information may be presented on a page.

This applies equally to newspapers, magazines, brochures, and

newsletters. Usually, a designer has a photograph or illustration, a

headline, and text. Those are the basic components of the story-

telling process. And if readers could have a dialog with designers,

they would say that their preference is a simple one: photo or illus-

tration, headline and text.

In its purest form, that is not difficult to do, and it makes the most

sense: the reader first looks at the photo to grab the first message of

the story, then reads the headline, the caption, the headline, and if

interest remains, the text.

Two other shapes that are part of the same type of packaging are:

The U-shape: With a horizontal headline across the page (let us say

across six columns), the text forms the shape of the letter U around

the photo or illustration.

The L-shape: This is similar to above, but the text ends under the

photo, without going up into a sixth column.

These shapes do the job well and should be part of every designer’s

must have templates.

pure design

89

Think U and L: As much as a design-er may wish to imagine new shapesto present information on a page,the fact is that the basic shapes ofthe letters U and L are still the best solutions. We see here how thesestructures work for our projectswith Listin Diario of the DominicanRepublic and El Pais of Cali,Colombia. Shapes are part of thepapers’ style, adding visual continu-ity, and permitting designers tospend more time in the selection of images than in the inventing ofnew shapes.