Seeing the Newspaper

By Kevin G. Barnhurst

Book Overview

In these days of tabloid television and slick magazines, the daily newspaper may seem old-fashioned and predictable. Here Kevin G. Barnhurst takes a second glance at the look of the newspaper: the architecture of the page. Seeing the Newspaper explores the history and meaning of the visual and graphic elements of the page, including the use of charts, type, and white space. The book points out that layout and design may appear secondary in importance to content, but can actually shape our impressions of the news as much as the words we read. The organization of the front page, for example, influences the order in which we read stories and how we rank news events and issues. Barnhurst, a former graphic designer, writes in an anecdotal style that will appeal not only to graphic arts enthusiasts but to everyone who finds joy in the early-morning ritual of reading the paper.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312108001
• ISBN13: 9780312108007
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Bedford/st Martins
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A new way of looking at news

People don't read every word in newspapers, they "get into them every morning like a hot bath," Marshall McLuhan is quoted in this book as saying. Kevin Barnhurst describes that hot bath in this very readable book, which presents what academics are learning in this field in terms the average person can readily understand. The newspaper is an environment, and its layout, design and photography shape our perception and absorption of the news. The medium may not be as totally determining as McLuhan believed, but the form certainly shapes the content, and it does so it ways that even people in the business (as I have been) don't really understand. Seeing the Newspaper helped me to understand why this matters, and how it occurs.