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Communicating to Members and the Media by Newsletters, Web Sites, and Other Means

Basic Design

The design of your newsletter, flyer, or other publication should help get your message across to readers by inviting them to read it and by highlighting and organizing the main points. A poor design makes readers disinclined to continue reading, confuses them, and makes it difficult for them to find the information they need. A good design draws them in and, not incidentally, lends your organization an air of substance and competence.

Think about what information your readers want from your communication and design so that they can easily find it. Also think about what information you want your readers to get, and design so they can easily find that.

Basic Design Principles

To draw attention to the important points and to make information easy to find, design your publications so that:

Items that are related look related
Items that are most important look dominant
Text is easy to read
Related Items

Consistency within publications. On the most basic level, the pages of your newsletter or Web site should look related to one another and not like a hodgepodge. In a newsletter or on a Web site, use the same line spacing throughout, the same body font, the same headline font, the same kind of bullets.

Less obviously, your pages should be spatially consistent. Pick a margin size and a gutter size and stick to it. Be aware of how items are aligned; if your newsletter’s banner starts 1 inch from the left edge of the page and the headline starts 1.5 inches from the left edge of the page and the story beneath it starts 1.3 inches from the left edge of the page, it will look straggly. Pick an invisible line—say, 1.3 inches from the left edge of the page, and align everything to it (or, as discussed below, break the alignment boldly for a clear contrast).

Similar elements should look similar. If four of the links on your Web site start with capital letters and one is all lowercase, or if four are flush left and one is a bit indented, readers will stumble, even if only unconsciously, and waste time trying to discern the relationship between the links (if, on the other hand, you are trying to indicate that one link is subsidiary to another, make the indentation obvious and perhaps use another marker, such as a different color or smaller font size, as well). If you use lists throughout, punctuate them consistently.

Related items in a single publication. Components of a story or related stories should be visually related as well. If you have a long story with both a sidebar and a captioned photo, carry over fonts, colors, or other stylistic elements. If every story contains information on how to contact the author, give that information in the same place every time. If you have multiple signed opinion columns, style them similarly (for example, with the columnists’ photos for all if you have any, and with all signatures appearing atop the columns or all appearing below).

Recurring items. Items such as a table of contents, chapter officers list, membership form, or action alert box may recur from issue to issue of a newsletter. Make them easy to find by placing them in the same part of the newsletter each time and giving them a similar or identical design.

Consistency among publications. One step beyond the creation of consistent and professional individual pieces is the creation of a consistent look among publications. A quick glance at one of your chapter or conference’s publications—whether it be your Web page, your newsletter, or a flyer, should let the reader know that it comes from your organization. Tie the pieces together with consistent application of design elements: fonts, colors, your logo, other graphics.

Dominant Items

Dominant items are those which attract the reader’s eye on a page or in a publication, so they should be the most important items. If you are in the middle of contract negotiations and have told chapter members to consult your Web site for updates, you want the updates to be noticeable. If you want members to call their senators and lobby for a piece of legislation, put the senators’ phone numbers and a few talking points at the top of your flyer or in a box rather than burying them in the middle.

One dominant item on a page is about right; too many and they stop being dominant.

Placement. An obvious signal of a dominant item is its placement. The most important information should be in an easy-to-see place: the front page of your newsletter, the top of your press release, the first screen of your Web site. Conversely, make sure that there is something interesting on whatever part of your publication a reader is likely to see first; for newsletters, especially those which are folded for delivery, this is as likely to be the back page as the front.

Heads and subheads. Main and subordinate headlines (aka subheads) flag to readers the hierarchy of importance of stories. Bigger headlines mean more important stories. Headlines should not exceed two lines and generally should fit on one line; if you can’t capture the story’s essence in the headline, you may also wish to use a “deck,” or explanatory sentence, under it. Decks are distinguished typographically from normal body text, often through italicization.

Subheads may be used within a long story, to break up text and allow readers to skim for parts that interest them, or they may be used as headlines for shorter stories. In either case, make sure that heads and subheads clearly describe the most important point of the story.

Headlines and subheads should be placed immediately above the text they head so it is obvious which story they are attached to (they should not “float“ between blocks of text).

Alignment. Once your page has a basic, consistent alignment, you can break it to draw attention to an object. The edge of a photo, pull quote, or box can line up neatly with the edge of a column or, if this is to be the dominant item on your page, boldly jut out beyond it (but it shouldn’t just sort of line up).

Boxes, graphics, text treatments. These can all be used to flag important items; they are discussed below.

Easy-to-Read Text

Alignment. Text can be aligned left (like the text you’re reading), aligned right, center aligned, or justified. Justified text is aligned on both left and right. For body text, choose left alignment or justified text. Left alignment text makes it easy for our eyes—trained to start reading on the left side of the page—to find the start of each line.

Justified text, since it is also left aligned, is similarly easy for readers and some people prefer its neater appearance, but it is more trouble to lay out

because care must be taken to avoid lines like this

with words strung out across the column. Right and center alignment, being more difficult to read, are best reserved for accents such as a table of contents or box ad.

Text should also be aligned at either the top or bottom of a page, the ”clothesline” vs. the “skyline,” or it can be aligned at both top and bottom. Aligning text at the top of the page is most common.

Paragraphs and subheads. Separate information into chunks to make it easier to digest. At the most basic level, we do this by dividing information into paragraphs, and by marking the beginning of new paragraphs with either a preceding blank line or an indent. In a longer piece, use subheads to divide the information,. (Using more than one of these techniques at once is unnecessary; a paragraph beginning under a subhead is obviously a new paragraph, so it does not also need to be indented.) Avoid long paragraphs; many people skim by reading only the beginnings of paragraphs.

Story continuations. If a story can’t all fit on the page where it starts, you need to continue it on another page. If the continued part is just a few lines, you might want to trim the story instead. If you do continue, make sure the continuation is clearly labeled so readers know what page to turn to in order to keep reading and so that once they get to the new page they can immediately see which item on that page is the continuation. Avoid multiple continuations and situations in which the end of a story appears on an earlier page than the beginning of a story.

Things to avoid. Various studies have found that readers find these things difficult to read:

Type set in all caps
White text on a black or colored background
Any text on darkly tinted backgrounds
Very wide columns
Text that is justified on both left and right
Small fonts
Lots and lots of text tightly crammed onto pages

Basic Design Elements

The basic elements of page design are type, boxes, decorative text treatments, graphics, and white space.

Type

Type is the primary element of most communications pieces. While it can be decorative, above all it needs to be easy to read.

Choose one or a couple of signature fonts for your chapter or conference, and stick with them as often as possible. You may want to use the same font throughout your publications, with a different size or weight emphasizing headlines, or you may want to choose different fonts to mark different kinds of text—one font for headlines and another for body text, for example. If you choose more than one font, make sure the fonts you select are sufficiently distinct as to be obviously a design, rather than an error.

The two main types of fonts are serif and sans serif. Serif fonts have little tags or tails coming off of the letters (what you’re reading now is a serif font); sans serif fonts do not. Serif fonts are easier to read in large quantities, so a common type combination pairs a serif font for body text and a sans serif for headlines, ads, or other accents. Decorative or script fonts can also be used as accents.

Popular serifs include Times New Roman, Palatino, Baskerville, and Clarendon. Popular sans serifs include Formata, Futura, and Helvetica. Arial, Geneva, Georgia, Verdana, and Times are good choices for the Web because they appear the same on most systems. (For more examples of specific fonts, see the Resources section.)

If responsibility for creating your publications is going to shift among chapter members, or if you plan to transmit them electronically, you will do yourself a favor by choosing signature fonts that are widely available. Otherwise, you may find when a new newsletter editor takes over that his or her computer doesn’t have the fonts needed for the newsletter, or you may find when you send out your press releases over e-mail that some arrive with weird characters or formatting.

Make sure the size and spacing of your text make it easy and inviting to read. Only the most dedicated reader will plow through pages of 10-point, single-spaced text.

Boxes

You can run an entire story inside a box, use a boxed sidebar as a companion piece to the main story, or box small announcements. Shaded boxes should be lightly shaded, generally no more than 10 percent. If you use more than one box in a publication, shade consistently. Text inside of text boxes should be inset a little bit so it does not touch the insides of the box.

Sidebars and boxes are often read before the main stories, so though they need to be short and pithy, they should also be self-explanatory (i.e., the reader should be able to get the point without referring to the main story).

Text Treatments

You can create visual interest and attract readers’ attention by beginning with a large drop cap, or by using ”pull quotes,” short excerpts from the text printed large. Drop caps should drop down into subsequent lines of text rather than jutting up and creating blank space between title and text.

Pull quotes are often silently edited in order to keep them short and punchy. They serve several purposes: highlighting a main point for skimmers who may read nothing else but the pull quote, creating interest in reading the story, and providing a graphic element. For the latter reason, they should be surrounded by plenty of white space.

Again, consistency and moderation are key. Choose one style of drop cap or pull quote to use throughout your document.

Graphics

Graphics break up text-heavy pages and create visual interest. A graphic draws the reader’s eye, so use it to highlight the information on the page that you want to draw attention to. To be effective, graphics should be used sparingly. One striking graphic on a page focuses the reader’s attention; three striking graphics on a page scatters the reader’s attention.

Graphics used consistently can help create a visual identity for your organization or for a feature of one of your publications. For example, the author’s photo might run above his or her column in every issue of your newsletter, or the same graphic might signal contract negotiations updates on your Web site.

If graphics point in one direction or the other—for example, a photo of a person’s face looking to the right, or a sketch of a bee flying to the left—place them so that they point in toward your page, drawing the reader’s attention toward your text rather than away.

Logo. A logo helps readers identify a publication as yours and help create a visual identity for your organization. If you are designing your own logo, consider the various uses to which it will be put. A big square logo that looks good on the Web may not be easily adaptable for stationery. Unless your printing budget is high enough to allow color in all your publications, you’ll need a black-and-white version of the logo to use sometimes. You will likely want to photocopy or fax letters occasionally, so make sure the logo reproduces reasonably well.

Placing your conference or chapter logo consistently on the page helps readers immediately identify a publication as yours.

Through the national office, you can order a chapter or conference logo that resembles the general AAUP logo. If you’re interested in ordering one, e-mail Gwendolyn Bradley at gbradley@aaup.org. The cost is about $50 for just the electronic logo; you can also order letterhead.

Photographs. Many photos do not reproduce well and so should not be used in print publications. This is especially true of digital photos, which generally need to have a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch (dpi) to print well. If you’re using a professional printer, ask if he or she is willing to evaluate the quality of digital pictures ahead of time; if you’ll be photocopying your newsletter, try making one copy of the photo to see how it looks (once you have finished laying out the newsletter it will be too late). You can, and should, use a much lower resolution on the Web.

Crop the photos you use so that the people depicted fit the frame without a lot of wall or sky around them.

You may be able to get photos from your institution’s press or public relations department, for example a campus shot to advertise the location of your conference’s annual meeting. If your institution offers photography classes, you may be able to cheaply hire advanced students to cover events. High-resolution digital photographs of national AAUP officers and of events such as the annual meeting or governance conference are sometimes available from the national office. If interested, send an e-mail to gbradley@aaup.org.

If you are taking the photos yourself, try to get as close to your subjects as possible so you get more person and less podium or wall. Take pictures of individuals or small groupings so you can get fairly close up. Posed group shots of a lot of people standing in a row facing the camera rarely turn out well; the people are too small. If possible, take photos in natural light and catch people when they are not posing.

If you’re photographing an event, choose a full section of seating or dense part of a demonstration to avoid dispiriting shots of a lot of empty chairs. Wait for people to look animated. At a demonstration, try to get shots of handmade (as opposed to preprinted) signs. When photographing speakers, make sure the microphone is not obscuring faces. If you’ll be running the photos in black-and-white, take the photos in black-and-white. Turn off the date-stamp function on your camera. Take a lot of photos to increase your chance of getting a usable one.

Alternatives to photos. Clip art (uncopyrighted generic images meant to be pasted into documents) is widely available and has improved in quality and variety over the years. Though many clip-art images still look dated or cartoonish, it’s possible to find better pieces and judicious use of them may add interest to publications. Try to avoid the very familiar pieces that we see used over and over again.

Depending on your budget and the talents of your members, you may also be able to get actual cartoons or sketches.

Simple charts and graphs also add visual interest and convey information quickly. For example: a bar graph showing average salaries at your institution compared with the one next door, a line graph showing ascending or descending class sizes over the past decade.

White Space

Leave some. It’s tempting to cram as much text as possible onto the page, but leaving white space on the page makes it easier and more inviting to read. That’s why children’s books have so much of it.