REGINA LITTLE THEATRE SOCIETY
The curtain is dropped on an outdated newsletter.
Designer: Sueann Hoppock
Initially targeting seniors, the Regina Little Theatre
(RLT) is now looking to expand its audience to
include more families and young people. However,
in its current design, the group’s newsletter is having
a hard time attracting any audience. RLT member
Colleen Hawkesford says the current look is “old-fashioned,
too crowded and busy.”
As Shakespeare said in his play Hamlet, “Brevity
is the soul of wit.” To revive the community theater’s
newsletter, DG designer Sueann Hoppock concurs
that less is more: “There is way too much copy in
this newsletter. The type is very small, and the readability
is difficult. There isn’t a consistent hierarchy of
type to help differentiate between the stories. There
are also shaded boxes of text within the stories that I
feel only add confusion.”
To entice a new audience to enjoy an evening
of theater, Hoppock edited the copy, increased font
size for legibility and created a distinct hierarchy for
the type, with consistent headline and subhead treatments
throughout the publication.
Creating a new, more dynamic nameplate to
grab attention, Hoppock gave the newsletter a playful
feel using inexpensive art from www.liquidlibrary.com (images 081C1004PM and 093X1002EC). For
the nameplate, she selected the font Futura Bold for
its clean lines, friendly feel and legibility on the black
background. She chose Adobe Garamond Pro for the
body copy, and suggests running the name and web
address prominently in the footer on each page to
send readers to the site for more information on the
theater, plays and participants.
“Since printing is donated,” explains Hoppock,
“I kept the design in the standard letter size and
didn’t allow for bleeds that would increase cost. I
chose black and cyan, and was able to incorporate
more color balance with the use of shaded boxes,
strokes and design elements. All of this adds visual
appeal and readability. Since cyan is already a
separate plate, I chose it for its ease of use with any
printer, but for variety any bright color could be substituted
for cyan in future issues.” For more on newsletters,
see Allan Haley’s article “Type Fix: Four Rules
of Type for Newsletters,” V12N2, pages 64-69.
