OUGD404 Hierarchies (Newspaper)

In this session we looked at newspapers and the hierarchy of type used. We had to cut what we read first and go down to the last thing we looked at. There are a lot of factors that can influence your decision at first such as pictures and position on the page.

Below is a page from the Guardian Newspaper which is predominantly body copy across 4 columns. The first thing my eye was drawn to was the title as it is in the largest font at the top takes up a large proportion of the page.  

The text which my eyes jumped to after the title was the text in the centre mainly because of the white space around it making it stand out more. The content played a part in what I looked at first. I wasn't interested in the article and only scanned over the text so automatically the bolder and larger point size fonts caught my attention first.

Separating the sections of the page allowed me to see the type hierarchy without page layout having an influence.  

A page from The Independent which uses a bold sans-serif font for the title which instantly drew my eye to it.  

Above is the order I had read them once the page had been broken down. Not much changed in the order when the individual sections of type had been cut out, the bold fonts stood out the most because of the blocks of black they create in comparison to the finer regular and italic fonts on the page.  

This task was useful in showing how much influence the editors have in choosing the order information is read and the reason certain fonts and point sizes are used.