Page layouting and design is a something that I am not really good about. It's sad but my gift of working with colors have lasted after my gradeschool years. So here's a good system from the book, Campus Journalism, that will give all of us hints on how to do it at least 'correctly' with our own website or blog.

A good page layout must be attractive and functional. Every element on the page must be able to tell the story in order to communicate.

Aims of an Effective Layout/Design

♥ To attract readers by an interesting and orderly appearance of the page.
♥ To arrange stories/entries and other other materials according to their importance.
♥ To capture attention by pictures.

I might speak the alien tongue now, but just keep on reading--maybe we'll learn something from this. Also, I think this might help us improve the 'traffic' that we want to get from the readers worldwide.

Primary Optical Area (POA) - reading the top left corner of each page.Then the reading eye moves downward and to the right, for he knows that when he gets to the lower right corner he has finished reading the whole page.

Terminal Area (TA) - Right, lower part of each page.

• Place a strong attention-compeller in the POA. The task is to convert a 'looker' into a 'reader'. So you must grab attention with a stron and/or interesting element.

• Anchor the corners. Strong elements are needed in all corners. They attract the eye into reading diagonally.

• Pictures are the best anchors. Also boxes and headlines.

• Use a horizontal layout. Body type arranged in wide, shallow areas seem to have much less bulk than the same copy run in a long single column. The reader is always ready to read an apparently shorter story than a long one.

• Avoid gray areas.

• Avoid separating related stories and pictures.

THE END. I hope you have learned something today.

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Announcement! The Summer Educational Program (SEP) in Mindanao will be on May 1-4, 2008 at Midway White Beach Resort. Email Kuya Rex dela Peña for camper applications or staff applications at rsmd_oftherock@yahoo.com. For more information, go to San Diego calendar of events to see the list of events coming up this year! Have a pleasant day everyone!


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