Recently I have been getting in the zone on a couple of upcoming projects. I am using these projects as an excuse to spend insane amounts of time combing through all kinds of websites looking for ideas, inspiration, and perhaps learn a few things. I have been looking specifically through designs of different newspapers around the world, as I think they will really help bring my concepts and ideas together as I start these upcoming projects, that are pretty heavily influenced by periodical layouts.

I know what I think of when someone mentions a newspaper [lame, boring, too much content crammed into too small of a space, nothing of visual interest, etc.], but after expanding my horizons, it is very obvious that there is some great layout and design work out there in what seems to be a pretty cut and dry genre.

What is interests me the most as I was looking through literally hundreds of different layouts is seeing how their content flows. Certainly, there are some very cool looking papers out there, but some of them had a horrible flow to them. Actually reading the content of some of these could easily induce a painful headache, while others had such a smooth flow that was put together beautifully in a way that makes reading it enjoyable. Obviously at the end of the day, the most important design aspect of a periodical is how easy it is read from start to finish. Now, content on the other hand is an entirely different story. I will not even begin to go there…

I guess the real inspiration I was looking for was flawless content flow. Certainly, many newspapers have a very similar look, but they all show their true colors in the way they lay down their content. I am on a quest to learn the best way to set up the flow of information for an online publication in a daily format. I have many ideas and many concepts that I have tried and were pretty rotten. I am getting ever closer to what I think will be a great solution.

If you would like to see a couple resources that have some great things for you to look at, check out these sites. They are great to click around on a bit.

Smashing Magazine - Award Winning Newspaper Designs

NewsDesigner.com - A Weblog About Newspaper Design, etc.

I hope someone else finds these sites as inspirational as I have. Enjoy this opportunity to learn about something you might not normally care as much about. Broaden those design horizons…