Sports page designs

[Shawn Garrison]

In July I will be starting a new job as sports editor of a weekly newspaper in the Kansas City area. One of the first things I am going to be working on is redesigning the paper's sports section. My experience with design is fairly limited so I was hoping I could get some advice from some of you guys about what works with designing sports pages. Any things you think I should try? Things to avoid? Etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Rama]

friend please look my website www.uniontimestoday.co.cc i hope u get some good thing from our sport section

we are a very small newspaper

[Lisa Burns]

Make sure your agate font is easy to work with and read. Get to know what kind of sports coverage you audience is looking for and focus your designs around that. A re-design should make things easier for readers and designers. Keep an eye on standing elements and how to make them look better.

[Evan Hill]

This probably seems like basic advice, but: Make the photo bigger. And use more photos of local kids.

Especially when you're working for a smaller community paper, people buy the paper to read about their kids, their neighbor's kids, etc. The higher kids faces:pages ratio you can get, the better.

[Howard Primer]

Keep things simple, because the more steps you add, the more complicated you make it, the more frustrating it will be in practice. If your experience is limited, start easy and add things as you learn more.

Make the basics easy to use. For example, make your breakout boxes basic enough that you only need one empty one in your library whether you're making it into a small chart or in paragraph form.

Keep your styles in line with the rest of the paper.

Do what's best to present your content. Don't add bells and whistles if they're only going to be a distraction.

I second the point about photos. Most of your readers aren't browsing. They'll be looking for something specific, i.e., their kid's name. So always keep in mind what's best for letting the readers find what they want fastest.

[Bryan Butler]

Keep an organized photo file, then don't be afraid to use mugshots. Find out when the teams take photos and make sure you're there with your camera, too. Individual shots are best, but take a hi-rez team shot if it's all you can do. Don't overdo it, and try not to use the same mugshots over and over. But like everyone else said, parents love to see their kids in the paper, and one big photo will usually only get you a couple faces in. Mugshots let you add a couple more faces and will give you some options for design.