All elements have 1 pica of white space between them

More spacious spots should be near the exterior of the layout

All elements must start and stop on a column

What do you notice?

An eyeline is a horizontal line that goes all the way across your pages. It guides a viewer to know which way to look. 

Also, it’s not a real line.

Place Twizzlers horizontally across the page as an eyeline. Remember the eyeline should be in the top or bottom third of the page and never in the center. 

An vertical Axis is a vertical line that goes all the way top to bottom of your pages. It guides a viewer to know which way to look. 

Also, it’s not a real line.

Still using the Twizzlers, add the vertical axis between two columns on the left page of the spread. 

NOTE: The intersection of the pieces of licorice represents the axis point and all elements of the design should extend from this “center."

Identify the largest quadrant of your spread. 

Place the graham crackers down adjacent to the vertical axis and horizontal eyeline to represent the dominant photo. 

Keeping to the rule of starting and ending design elements on a column, you might  need to break the crackers to fit the desired area for the dominant photo. But remember nothing has to be perfect, it is a cracker after all.

After the dominant photo comes the body copy and headline. 

The goldfish crackers will represent the body copy, headline and subheadline. 

If preferred, students could use jelly beans to represent the headline to differentiate the two types of copy. 

The headline and copy typically go in the second largest quadrant and should be near the dominant photo.

Add a smaller, secondary photo. 

Use the Chicken in a Biskit crackers toadd the smaller, secondary photos. 

The first image will start at the vertical axis, go across the gutter and reach the bottom external margin. 

The bulls-eye effect...places the heavier elements, like photos, toward the axis point and middle of spread. 

Photos are followed by copy and then white space around the edges.

Using various shapes and sizes, fill in the rest of the spread with additional photos.

Remember to start at the eyeline and go to the ends of a column. (Don’t forget...you should not place photos across the eyeline; images should start at the eyeline and go up or down.) 

Resist the urge to make pictures reach every corner of the spread. 

White space is a good thing!

With crackers/pictures in place, add captions using the M&Ms. 

There should be a caption for each picture and that it should be next to the image, possibly above or below, or to the left or right. 

Don't “trap” captions between photos; copy should be placed on the outsides of images.

Captions should be the same width (in this case, one column wide), but they can be different lengths. This gives a little versatility when there are more names to include or a longer quote.

Now do a design check!