Newsletter: HELP eNews

Design Research

     A loyalty-building newsletter requires clear, muscular writing and eye-catching design. But that isn’t enough, applying few principles to newsletter design is important for example use headlines to keep readers reading. It doesn’t matter how strong a story is if nobody reads it. The world’s best headline writers work for the supermarket tabloids. They understand an important truth: The headline is what pulls a reader into a story. Hold your nose and buy a tabloid. You’ll see: Despite the questionable content, the headlines are exciting and enticing.

      All designs have certain basic elements or building blocks chosen to convey the message beyond the actual words or photos used. How we place those items on the page determines the structure of our designs and affects the overall readability and determines how well our design communicates the desired message. The principles of design govern that placement and structure. Graphic design encompasses the creation of a great many types of projects but for the purposes of these lessons we're focusing on the elements and principles of design as they apply to typical desktop publishing projects including logos, ads, brochures, business cards, newsletters, books, and to some extent web pages.

      Different instructors or designers have their own idea about the basic principles of design but most are encompassed in the 6 principles which are balance, proximity, alignment, repetition or consistency, contrast and white space. Before we begin to analyse the layout, the writing, the use of graphics and white space of your newsletter design, we should pick up your newsletter and look at it as if for the first time. One measure of newsletter design effectiveness is the first impression a reader has upon seeing it. Does it say boring, exciting, read me now, save me for later, or, don't bother - there's nothing important here?

      Without reading more than a few words the nameplate, the choice of layout, the grayness or openness of the design, color and weight of the paper, the balance of text and graphics all give clues as to the value of the content. Design with definite goals in mind for the newsletter design one goal of good newsletter design is to entice the reader to read the information in the newsletter. Designers achieve this through choice of layout typefaces and use of visuals.

Conceptualization

Cover Page: Design 1

Graphicriver (n.d.) Snowball newsletter. Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/theme_previews/232175-snowball-newsletter-template

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Graphicriver (n.d.) Fresh Corporate newsletter. Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/item/fresh-corporate-newsletter-/1945557?sso?WT.ac=category_item&WT.seg_1=category_item&WT.z_author=buetler

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Design 1

Cover Page: Design 2

Graphicriver (n.d.) Snowball newsletter. Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/theme_previews/232175-snowball-newsletter-template?index=2

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Graphicriver (n.d.) 4-pages newsletter template. Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/theme_previews/162194-4pages-newsletter-template

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Design 2

Content Page: Design 1

Graphicriver (n.d.) Newsletter fresh green (4 pages). Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/item/newsletter-fresh-green-4-pages/55603?sso?WT.ac=category_item&WT.seg_1=category_item&WT.z_author=GeertDD

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Design 1

Content Page: Design 2

Graphicriver (n.d.) 6 pages newsletter. Retrieved from http://graphicriver.net/theme_previews/2907811-6-pages-newsletter?index=5
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Crafting

Cover Page:
Creating Border

Use the rectangle tool to draw a box & fill it with black colour

Use the line tool & draw a line; change it to thick-thin line; change stroke to red colour

Use the line tool & draw a straight line on top of the thick-thin line;
change line to  Dashed (4 and 4); change stroke to white color

Cover Page:

Masthead

Added a graduation hat; changed transparency to 60%

Cover Page:

Inside Issue column

Crop picture diagonally

Use rectangle tool & draw a box; change fill to red color
insert text in white color

Separate differ slug with a line (thick-thick); change stroke to white color

Insert background picture - Arrange > send to back; transparency @ 21%

Content Page:

Creating title border

Use Rectangle tool & draw a box; change fill to red color

Change border style to Fancy

Use Rectangle tool to draw a smaller box; change fill to maroon color;
place it at one end of the border

Place text in border & adjust accordingly

Content Page:

Separating Article with line tool

Article looks difficult to be distinguished

Use line tool and draw 5 lines; tilt one of the line diagonally
Top lines: Thick-Thin; Bottom line: Thin-Thick
Change stroke to red color

Content Page

Text Wrap, Frames & Effects

Text Wrap picture & text

Create frames for picture; change border thickness to 4 pt;  change fill to white  color

Insert drop shadow effect to picture to give the 3D feel.

Final Artwork