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St. Patrick’s Day Layout Lesson

Posted on March 14, 2018January 17, 2019 By Ann Thompson

When I was just out of high school and enrolled in the Famous Artists Course, the Spring 1960 issue of their maga­zine was sent to me. Two pages described various approaches in arranging a set of five elements for a layout of a news­paper ad. The lesson offered nine different arrange­ments of size and alter­ation of the elements. There was an expla­na­tion of each of the versions – and the reason for choosing #8.

Famous Artists' Magazine cover
Famous Artists’ Maga­zine cover 
How to make a layout
How to make a layout 

I never referred to that lesson. Years later, as I produced many layouts, a client often empha­sized the impor­tance of each element or the format, size and length of head­line or columns of type – all influ­enced the choices that were possible. Some ads converted to other sizes, one page, double page, two columns, etc. and each had to carry the basic ​“look” of them all.
The biggest variety of choices, I found, was when there was full freedom in illus­trating in-and-around the needed parts. I was never sure of the best choice. I felt that if I explored as many possi­bil­i­ties that I could in the time allotted, I could leave it to the client to make the choice.
These very rough full-sized ​“thumb­nails”, below, were presented to the San Fran­cisco phar­ma­ceu­tical agency of Rain­oldi, Radcliffe & Bolles on November 10, 1980 for an invi­ta­tion needed for a gath­ering in Boston, on St. Patrick’s Day, March 22, 1981. Client: Cutter Laboratories.
Here are the 25 possi­bil­i­ties and the last one shown is the printed invitation.

Version 1
Version 1 
Version 2
Version 2 
Version 3
Version 3 
Version 4
Version 4 
Version 5
Version 5 
Version 6
Version 6 
Version 7
Version 7 
Version 8
Version 8 
Version 9
Version 9 
Version 10
Version 10 
Version 11
Version 11 
Version 12
Version 12 
Version 13
Version 13 
Version 14
Version 14 
Version 15
Version 15 
Version 16
Version 16 
Version 17
Version 17 
Version 18
Version 18 
Version 19
Version 19 
Version 20
Version 20 
Version 21
Version 21 
Version 22
Version 22 
Version 23
Version 23 
Version 24
Version 24 
Printed Piece
Printed Piece 

And – you will see, I had been showing four-leaf-clovers! Sham­rocks have only three leaves.
(Just now, I looked up ​“sham­rock”. I found out that the sham­rock was the image used by Saint Patrick to illus­trate the doctrine of the Trinity and it comes from the Irish word: seamróg.)
Every St. Patrick’s Day, I had seen the deco­ra­tive three-leaf sham­rocks. I might have noticed my mistake before presenting my sketches or did the agency catch my error?
If the four-leaf-clovers had been spotted only when I submitted my finished art, I would have been required to correct that area with a patch. IF the error, unno­ticed, went to print – it would have been a very expen­sive re-do. Lucky for me, this lesson in layouts taught me to ques­tion if I had the correct image of every element required.

Ann Thompson

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