Football Programme Covers - Back Cover Layout Development

Having been talking about the project whenever we've had the chance, Joe and I decided to use 145mmx210mm for our programmes to follow the commercially viable nature of the of the project whilst sticking to information gained from our research. We've also decided that a stadium tour of Anfield wasn't going to be useful enough to justify the cost involved which would total about £45 each. I also asked him to remove the circles from his previous file as we should think about filling empty space at the end of the project. He sent me this to develop some layouts from.

We'd decided that we'd like the image to wrap around onto the back cover to achieve a sense of continuity. Because the section of the image that will be on the back cover will vary from cover to cover, the grid system needs to take this into account, meaning that there needs to be a column on the right where content can be moved around easily, and the more prominent information such as the team sheets should be on the left and in the middle. A 3-column grid is the most appropriate way to deal with this and is something that's been used in more modern programmes (as my layout breakdowns show) - this means they'll be recognisable to the audience.

I got some A4 graph paper and started setting up a grid knowing that I wanted 3 columns and worked out that using 10mm margins and 7mm gutters would work and gave good proportions for this. Having 9 rows made each row roughly twice as high as the 7mm gutters, this keeps the proportions fairly well balances as well as providing quite a lot of freedom. 

The numbers of characters in the title of the programmes can be quite variable, so having rows that are close together is important in order to keep the headings consistant with the grid even if they're not all consistant with each other. This is because the number of characters in the title will dictate the point size the title will be, which in turn dictates the height of the text.

Starting with the image, I then estimated where all the information would go. The program covers we'd looked at for research seemed as if they were designed around the image, so it made sense to check put the image in place first.

 Recreating this grid in InDesign alongside the image Joe provided me allowed me to check how viable this grid would be by judging the amount of space the image Joe drew takes up compared to how much space my grid allows it.

My sketch was fairly accurate to the size of Joe's drawing, so I went ahead and added in some basic shapes and features into the file to give Joe an idea of where everything would sit.

I used Bebas Neue Bold and Avenir Next DemiBold, fonts that are bold and masculine to connect with the predominantly male audience, are both fairly modern to appeal to a younger audience who may not buy programmes regularly, and are both sans-serif and fairly plain so don't draw any attention away from Joe's illustrations. The two work well together due to the large degree in which their shape varies, with Bebas being condensed and Avenir Next being very square.

I showed these to Joe to get some feedback from him.