Creating My Newspaper: Columns

Columns

The first thing I did when creating my newspaper was calculate the width and height of an A3 size paper. Luckily I used adobe illustrator which automatically showed me both values with the width being at 297 millimeters and the height at 420 millimetres. I then divided the width by 5 to equal 59.4 millimetres. The reason for dividing the width by 5 is because I wanted five columns on the front page of my newspaper. This meant that each column had to be 59.4 millimetres in width.

I then had to decide calculate my gap difference from one column to another. I initially decided on a centimetre gap but then realised that the gap was too wide. After continuously trying out different numbers, I decided on a 3 millimetre gap which meant that the width of my columns had now changed to 53.4 millimetres.

Although the use of five columns is usually used in broadsheets, and  tabloids use four, I wanted to go against the codes and conventions of a tabloid.

Broadsheets have five columns because they usually have more information on their front page in comparison to a broadsheet. I did not want to continue my main story on the front page so therefore I wanted to ensure that I had enough columns to feature the whole main story.